


Positivity is a Luxury

by magicalmolly



Series: Lost My Mind Duology [2]
Category: Beetlebabes - Fandom, Beetlejuice - Fandom, Beetlejuice the musical - Fandom
Genre: Afterlife, Dark Romance, F/M, Hades and Persephone Vibes, The Netherworld, beetlebabe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 38,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25116892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicalmolly/pseuds/magicalmolly
Summary: *A SEQUEL TO MY FANFIC 'It's Not as if I've Lost My Mind'* this will make ZERO sense unless you read that one first!!!https://archiveofourown.org/works/23592346/chapters/56608333Lydia Deetz is dead and the demon she's in love with—Beetlejuice—is the one who killed her. But everything is not what it seems in the afterlife, and Lydia is grappling with being in love with a soulless murderous demon who she spent ten years avoiding. As the truth of Beetlejuice's past comes to light, Lydia has a serious decision to make regarding her future, because forever is a very long time. It turns out death doesn't solve everything.
Relationships: Beetlejuice and lydia Deetz, Beetlejuice/Lydia, Beetlejuice/Lydia Deetz, beetlejuice and lydia - Relationship
Series: Lost My Mind Duology [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824076
Comments: 75
Kudos: 98





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> THE SEQUEL IS HERE FOLKS!!!!! You favorite goth & ghoul are back in action. This fic will be updated Mon, Wed, Fri, Sun. Enjoy!

“This is stupid,” the demon said as he handed the ghost her cup of coffee.

“You think everything sentimental is stupid.”

He smirked. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

She rolled her eyes and brought the styrofoam cup of cheap gas station coffee to her lips and sipped greedily at the scalding liquid. She was the only ghost she knew who was always this tired. “I’m not sentimental,” she said.

He draped an arm around her shoulders. “Ah, so that’s why I adore you.”

She bumped her hip into his. “Shut up, Beetlejuice.”

It was just before dawn, the sky was grey and clouded over the cemetery as well as over the haunted house up the hill. Lydia ducked from under his arm and leaned back against the tombstone— _his_ tombstone. He watched her, she looked relaxed which was rare. A slight breeze blew by, ruffling the hem of her gauzy black dress. She pulled her gaze from where it had landed on the haunted house, back to him. She raised an eyebrow in question as to why he was staring at her.

“How long do we need to stay here?” He asked with an immature, mocking groan.

Lydia rolled her eyes. “You have no compassion.”

“Yes, I do.”

Lydia shook her head as she sipped more cheap coffee. “No, demon,” she said with her fake cold tone, he couldn’t help but love when she was mean to him; it always made him feel akin to her. “You just said you hate sentimentality.”  


“ _You_ said that. You also said _you_ hate it, so why are we hanging around?”  


“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, “are we in a rush? Are we going to miss our flight?” Sarcasm dripped from every word and this time it was Beetlejuice who rolled his eyes. Lydia pushed herself up straight from her lean against the grave. “Seriously though, can you just, give me a minute? We’re never gonna be able to come back here again—well _I’m_ not.”  


“I’m sure we can find a mirror when we get there,” he said, his voice gentler. “You can still travel that way, dying didn’t make you any less of a witch.”  


Lydia grimaced. “Don’t call me that.”  


“Why? It’s what you are.”

“I have some mirror magic, that’s it.”  


“Dollface you have much more than _some._ And having _any_ magic makes you a witch.”  


“I can’t become that much of a stereotype,” she said, somewhat indignantly. “A dead, teenage, goth ghost who’s also a witch? Oh _and_ has a demon boyfriend?”

He chuckled, he was always amused by when she got worked up over being called a witch. Ever since the first summer they’d met and she’d used her magic to climb through her mirror and walk right up to his coffin door, he’d told her she was a witch—a strangely powerful one too—but Lydia didn’t wanna hear it. He thought after being dead for nearly a year she’d have loosened up a bit about it, but clearly he was wrong. 

“Mirrors don’t matter when it comes to this place,” she said. “And you know that. They’re already gone. All of them. And there’s no mirrors to lead here, to the cemetery.” She knew that didn't really matter, she could easily open a portal, yet another magical skill she possessed. But she didn't want to argue, she wanted a moment to grieve.  


“Why would you want to come back to the cemetery.”

Lydia shrugged, but she knew why. It was where they’d fought and made up, kissed and yelled. It was where she died. It was where he was buried. It meant something to her that she wasn’t sure he could understand. He was soulless. He could grasp and feel some emotions, but not the vast amount that she did. It would always be a strain on their relationship, but there were times when Lydia found it especially frustrating. This was one of them.

“Babe,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand in his, “if you want to stay, we can. We can go back to The Netherworld.”

“You’re not allowed to stay there,” she pointed out.

“So I’ll get you a place and come visit.” She shook her head. He didn’t offer they go back to his coffin because he knew that was out of the question. “We can stay here if you want, live among the graves, scare the kids on Halloween.”

Lydia smiled a bit at that but still she shook her head. “I want to go,” she said. “It’s what’s right. But just because something is the right choice doesn’t make it any less anxiety-inducing.”  


He remembered feeling that way when he was alive. He sometimes got flashes of emotions he’d used to be feel back when he could breathe and bleed, and then there was when he was a regular ghost—one who still had a soul. He squeezed her hand. 

“Babe, if this is your home—”

“ _You’re_ my home,” she said firmly. “Wherever you go, I go. I just wanted to say goodbye. This is where my life ended. This is where—” she took a steady breath to fight off an infuriating crying spell, “this place,” she gestured up the hill to the haunted house that was no longer haunted, “is where I met you. And this,” she turned around and nodded to his grave, “is where I died.” She turned back around to meet his gaze, he felt an ache in his bones from seeing the sorrow in her eyes. “I still have a soul so some things sit heavier on me than they would on you. You’ve been dead for centuries. I’ve been dead for just a little while. Being alive is still a fresh memory, it feels so real sometimes that I forget that it isn’t. I forget…” her hand absentmindedly went to cover her chest where her eternal stab wound was, forever bloody beneath her dress. The spot where he’d plunged the dagger into her heart. A few months ago for them in the land of the dead, but a year up here in the world of the living. She dropped her hand from her chest and threw back the last of her coffee. Beetlejuice waved his hand and the empty cup vanished. She held onto his stormy gaze. “Sometimes I forget that you killed me.”

He clenched his fists. “You’ll be mad about that forever, won’t you?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be sad about it forever. But I’ve accepted it. I’m dead. You’re a demon. And,” she took ahold of his hand again, “you’re the love of my existence.” She knew she’d never truly forgive him for killing her, for everything that lead up to it, those final ten years of her life. But there was no going back, and there was no reasoning with demons on certain things. She knew it was wrong to stay with him, she knew he wasn’t a good person, but those were rational thoughts and rational thoughts were for the living.

“I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s go.”  


“Wait,” someone said from behind them. The couple turned to see Emily Deetz, Lydia’s mother, standing amongst the graves. “There’s something you need to know."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She knew it was wrong, stupid, insane to love a demon, to love someone who’d said and done awful things to her; someone who’d literally killed her. But being sensical is something for the living. In death ghosts often found there was no point in clinging to the morals and logic of the living world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story will move with multiple timelines as the first one did. Hope you enjoy! New chapter Friday :)

On the night Lydia Deetz died The Maitlands threw themselves into the Netherworld to try and find her, but the waiting room was only for those who had _just_ died, any other ghosts trying to get through had to stand in the external line which was longer than the one for Splash Mountain. So while Adam and Barbara were wrapped in a blanket of anxiety worried about Lydia, Lydia herself was slouched down in one of the waiting room chairs while her boyfriend and murderer scribbled away at a clipboard.

“Almost done your paperwork,” Beetlejuice said, clicking the ballpoint pen in his hand repeatedly, infuriating Lydia. “Do you have any allergies?” He asked, looking over at her.

Lydia hadn’t said a single word for the past hour as she let Beetlejuice make his way through the tome of newly-dead paperwork that was required before she could be fully processed and let into the realm of The Netherworld. He’d offered her the pen when he’d first started filling it out, but she’d zoned out and decided staring at the wall was more exhilarating than talking to him, and he’d taken the hint.

He knew she was mad that he’d killed her, he was just hoping that she’d get over it soon, so he’d filled out her paperwork for her, hoping completing this task would be one point in his favor on his way to winning back her heart.

“Do I have any allergies?” Lydia repeated the question back at him. “Why would that matter now?”

“I have no idea, babe, I didn’t write the paperwork.”

Lydia sighed. “Bees.”  


He scribbled it down. “Done,” he said, hopping to his feet and marching back over to the receptionist’s window. Jeanie snatched the clipboard from him and glanced over the papers to make sure everything was filled out. Lydia watched as he exchanged words with her, nodded, and made his way back to where she was still slouched down in her chair.

“Okay, babe, all set. Ready to go?”  


“Go where?”

“Well…ah…they said you can go to the newly-dead dorms or you can come with me.” 

“Go with you?” Lydia asked.

“Well, yeah,” the demon replied lamely. “You’re allowed to leave with someone you know, skip the whole dorming process.” Lydia didn’t respond. So he kept talking. “The dorms are where the…well, newly-dead go to get situated until they decide where they want to go in their region of The Netherworld. Once you’ve been dead awhile you’ll have enough energy to travel to other regions so some ghosts just stay in the dorms until then so they can travel to where their family members died.”

Lydia let those words sink in. Her mother had died in New York; Lydia had died in Connecticut. She had _just_ died, so who knew how long it would be until she’d have the dead-energy to travel to wherever her mother was. 

“Are the dorms nice?” She asked softly, not sure what else to say.

Beetlejuice gave her a knowing look. “Babe, you went to college, what’d ya think?”

Lydia sighed in defeat. “I’ll go with you.”

* * *

They materialized in Beetlejuice’s coffin. Lydia took in the familiar surroundings of the small space. It had once been so sacred, but now felt like a prison. She looked at Beetlejuice. 

“I assume days have passed up above?” They’d been in the waiting room for hours, and she had no idea for how many hours she’d been asleep before that.

“Probably weeks,” Beetlejuice said.

“Great," Lydia said sarcastically. “I bet I missed my own funeral.”

“Babe you don’t want to go to your own funeral, trust me.”

“Did you go to your funeral?” She snapped.

“No.”  


“Why not?”  


“Because I didn’t have one.”

Lydia opened her mouth to ask him why, but then realization sunk in. He’d died centuries ago. He’s committed _suicide_ centuries ago. Which was considered a sin, and sinners were buried in unmarked graves, unblessed and forgotten. 

“Oh,” she said softly. “But…you have a tombstone. Like, an official marked one.”

“Yes, Lydia. I know.”  


“Well…how?”  


“I honestly don’t know,” he said with a shrug.

“Haven’t you tried to find out?”

He sighed, trying to fight back his growing annoyance at her questions. She always knew how to make him uncomfortable. “How?” He asked. “I don’t think that’s something I could just google at the library.”  


“Were you buried in an unmarked grave and then moved? Like Edgar Allan Poe?”

“Lydia, I _don’t know.”_ He said through gritted teeth. Lydia bit her lip, swallowing all the questions she wanted to ask. Beetlejuice took notice and sighed again. “I thought you were still mad at me.”

“I am.”

“And how long do you think that’s going to last?”

“Awhile.” Beetlejuice raised an eyebrow. “Gods,” Lydia said, her annoyance and anger returning. “You murdered me and you think I’m just gonna get over it.”

Beetlejuice rolled his eyes. “I didn’t murder you.”  


“Oh sure,” Lydia said, rolling her own eyes. “I just accidentally fell on your knife.”

He sighed. “Okay so I murdered you. But you’re here, you’re dead, you don’t have the energy yet to travel to your mom,” he hoped she wouldn’t remember that _he_ could travel to her mom, “and I’m the only dead person you know in this neck of the woods. So it’s the newly-dead dorms, or be here with me.”

“I already chose to be here,” she snapped. “So don’t lecture me.”

“So are you just going to be pissed off the whole time you’re here?”  


She crossed her arms. “There’s nothing else to do, so yes.”

He groaned and then snapped his fingers and suddenly a giant bookshelf appeared, taking up almost an entire wall of the coffin. Lydia gasped as she turned to take it all in. It held every book she had back in the haunted house as well as dozens and dozens she wished she’d owned or wanted to read but hadn’t gotten the chance to. She quickly bit back her excitement and glared at the demon again.

“There’s nothing to eat here.”  


“Babe, we’re dead. We don’t need to eat.”  


“You ate back at the house.”  


“Gods, fine.” He snapped his finger again and a small kitchenette appeared in the corner of the coffin, she could smell coffee brewing in the pot. 

She chewed her lip. “A shower.”

Again he snapped his fingers and a small door appeared across from the kitchen. Lydia opened her mouth to name something else that the coffin was lacking when he snapped his fingers two more times. First a couch and tv appeared behind her, and then behind that, on the far side of the room, another door appeared. She looked back at him, confused. He nodded toward it, urging her to go look. She walked over and threw open the door and gasped. It was a dark room. She turned back to him, struggling to hide her joy. The demon could tell and smirked.

“Good enough for ya, babe?”

She gently closed the door and came to stand in front of him again, a little closer than before. He noticed this and it sent him reeling. He wanted to pull her against him and devour her, but he knew that was the last thing she wanted right now. 

“Why didn’t you have any of this stuff in here before? Or at least the books.”

He shrugged. “Guess I’m pretty boring when you’re not around.”

She didn’t say anything, just looked around again at the newly transformed coffin. Her eyes then landed on the tiny bed. The one where she’d given him her virginity ten years ago. 

She flicked her gaze back to him. “You’re not going to make a second bed, are you?”

“Nope,” he said with another smirk. “But I’ll give ya this.” He waved his hand and next to the door leading to the shower, an alcove appeared and in it was a king-sized bed with four posters and a canopy of black gauze that glittered in the darkness of the coffin.

She sighed. “I am tired,” she admitted, not daring to look at him.

“Dying can cause some fatigue.”  


She shot him a glare, thinking he was joking with her, but realized he was serious. She absentmindedly prodded her stab wound, it still hurt but was a dull ache as opposed to the initial agonizing pain. 

She walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge. She kicked off her boots and crawled under the covers. She saw Beetlejuice now standing at the foot of the bed and she sighed. “You can lay here but don’t touch me.”  
He smiled, already amused by how she was trying to take control of the space. If it meant she’d stay with him then he didn’t mind. He went over and kicked off his own boots, then took off his jacket and tie before crawling in next to her. She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. 

“Why did you do it?” She asked, her voice devoid of any anger and now just full of sadness.

Beetlejuice took in the glistening behind her eyes. Ghost couldn’t cry, but she was newly-dead so remnants of her living self were still there, residually, it would be awhile before they wore off. He felt bad she was so sorrowful right now, but he wasn’t a decent enough person to feel guilty for what he’d done.

“I told you why. I want to be with you forever.” She went to argue but he kept talking. “You wouldn’t marry me and whether or not you’ll admit it you run away from me or banish me when you’re mad—or both. Now that you’re the last living person to say my name and you didn’t say it again to send me back before you died—well, now I’m free forever. No one else can summon a demon until the person who summoned them last puts them back. Which you never did.”  


“So you’ll have your powers forever and be visible to the living world,” she said.

“Exactly. And this way your soul isn’t tied to mine. This is what you wanted.”

“You know that’s not true,” she said.

“Lydia,” his voice was beginning to morph into a kind of sadness of his own. “You said you loved me.”

“Because I do.”

“Even now?”  


She knew it was wrong, stupid, insane to love a demon, to love someone who’d said and done awful things to her; someone who’d literally killed her. But being sensical is something for the living. In death ghosts often found there was no point in clinging to the morals and logic of the living world. The Maitlands were rare, the obsession to try and maintain the same order and normalcy they had when being alive would eventually drive them mad. Lydia knew she’d be the kind of ghost who gave into the wild absurdity of death. Why worry about right or wrong when it came to things like love? She couldn’t go back and staying still would only make her more miserable. She was furious at him, she hated him, but that didn’t mean she suddenly loved him any less. Lydia knew from a young age, that being normal was vastly overrated. Now, dead at twenty-seven, laying in bed next to the demon who murdered her, she was content to exist in the strange and unusual—for good.

“Yes, even now,” she said. “But I also still hate you. And I will for awhile. You fucking _killed_ me. You can’t just expect me to get over it in a few hours.”  
Beetlejuice knew she had a point even though he didn’t want to admit it. Sometimes he wished she was a demon too so that he wouldn’t have to constantly face her emotions; not because he had a problem with her being emotional but because he struggled to remember how emotions _felt._ Yes, he felt with Lydia more than he had since he sold his soul, but his emotions were a muted and morphed kind as opposed to Lydia’s pure and vibrant ones. 

“I’ll wait,” he said. “Until you _only_ love me.”

Lydia couldn’t help but smile. Then, without another word, she rolled over and went to sleep. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you…” he took a breath even though he didn’t need to breathe, “do you have nightmares about me?”
> 
> Lydia pulled back again to meet his gaze. “Beetlejuice,” she said, her own voice taking on a gentler tone, “I always dream about you, but the dreams are never nightmares.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so glad you guys are enjoying this sequel! CONTENT WARNING: there are very brief mentions in this chapter of Lydia's past assaults from the first in the series, so just be aware.
> 
> I hope everyone is doing their best to stay safe, sane, and strong during this nightmarish time. I love reading your comments, they mean the world to me. 
> 
> New chapter on Sunday :)

Lydia was screaming. Beetlejuice shot up in bed, taking a moment to register why the bed he was in was big and comfy and holding more than just himself. It came rushing back that his plan had worked, Lydia was dead, she was his. She was also currently having a nightmare, thrashing and screaming next to him. 

He knew she had made it clear she wasn’t ready to be touched by him again, but he couldn’t just let her lay there, trapped in whatever terror her subconscious was causing. He gently reached out and pushed a lock of hair back from her face which was slick with sweat.

“Lydia,” he said gently. “Baby, wake up.” It didn’t work, she was too deep into her night terror. Beetlejuice ground his teeth together, knowing she wouldn’t like it but he had to wake her up. He leaned down and shook her by the shoulders. “Babe, time to wake up now.”  


The rough shaking jolted Lydia from her sleep and without thinking she threw herself into Beetlejuice’s arms. The demon didn’t protest, he dutifully wrapped her up in his arms and held her as she shook from sobs. She hadn’t openly cried like this in front of him in a decade, but in that moment, she wasn’t in his coffin, she wasn’t twenty-seven, and she wasn’t dead. She was eighteen and terrified in a dark alley with Dante on top of her. She was eighteen and terrified in a dark dorm room with Bret on top of her. The dream had been an agonizing loop of those two different nights, both times with a violent man pressed up behind her, pushing the breath from her lungs, the life from her body. Both times she’d only managed to say Beetlejuice’s name twice. Both times she had tried to disassociate and pretend it was the demon instead. And now as she slowly came to and remembered where she was and who was holding her, instead of shoving him away she let her muscles relax and let herself melt into him.

The ghoul was surprised, he knew Lydia could hold on to a grudge once she’d decided to, and he was sure murdering her wasn’t going to be something she let go of anytime soon, but he also knew that no matter how mad she got at him, he was the one she always called when she was in distress. Alive or dead, he was her comfort. So she let him hold her. She knotted her hands into his shirt and gently tugged him closer. He smoothed down her sweat-soaked hair with one hand and pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head.

“Was I screaming?” She mumbled softly against his chest, admittedly a bit embarrassed.

“Yes,” he said, repeating the motion of smoothing down her hair. 

She closed her eyes and gave in to how soothing it felt; how _good_ it felt to be taken care of for the first time in years. She decided for this moment to let her anger take a back seat to her desperate need for affection. 

“Do you want to tell me what it was about?” He asked.

She shook her head. “You already know. It was…Dante and…” her voice trailed off. She’d never told him about Bret and had no idea that he already knew.

At the mention of Dante, Beetlejuice’s grip on her tightened. He knew that night was his fault. He’d abused her. He’d pushed her away. If it wasn’t for how he’d treated her that night she never would’ve gone off alone into town late at night and Dante never would’ve found her and attacked her.

“I’m sorry, babe,” he murmured into her hair.

Lydia pulled back slightly to look into his eyes. “Did you,” she said, “just apologize?”  


He wasn’t sure what to say but then he noticed the light smile quickly pass across her lips. He smiled back. “First time for everything, babe.”  


He wanted so badly to kiss her, and she wanted so badly to be kissed by him. But even though she could make her anger take a backseat, she still couldn’t bring herself to give in to him so completely, so soon.

“I should’ve been there,” he said.

“You were there that time,” she said, not realizing what she’d said until it was too late. When his gaze turned demanding, she spoke again. “I just mean…well, in college, there was this guy…”

“I know.”  


Lydia froze. “What…what do you mean _you know?”  
_

He debated lying to her, but knew he was on the thinnest of ice as it was (perhaps even already plunged beneath and freezing, waiting for her to pull him back to the surface).

“I saw. That night. You said my name, twice. I tried to get to you, tried to help you. I _tried_ ,” he gripped her even tighter, fighting back his own rage—not at her, but at himself and at that monster, Bret, for what he’d done to her. “I tried to get that piece of shit off you but you couldn’t see me, you were barely conscious. I prayed you’d say my name one more time.”  


Lydia had tears in her eyes again as she stared at him intently, letting him finish speaking. “That wasn’t the only time,” she said finally. Beetlejuice dug his nails into her back. “I dated him,” she said, in a softer voice. She couldn’t help but feel a bit of shame. “I cheated on you. I was lonely and furious and convinced myself having a demon for a boyfriend was absurd and impossible. So I…I let him…his name was Bret and…”  


“Lydia,” he growled, pulling her flush against him and leaning his head down so that their foreheads were touching. “You don’t need to explain or justify anything to me.”

Lydia realized she was shaking. She nodded again and curled up against him once more. The two laid like that for awhile in silence. 

“You dream about him too,” Beetlejuice said. Not a question, but Lydia nodded anyway. “Do you…” he took a breath even though he didn’t need to breathe, “do you have nightmares about me?”

Lydia pulled back again to meet his gaze. “Beetlejuice,” she said, her own voice taking on a gentler tone, “I always dream about you, but the dreams are never nightmares.” She held his gaze a moment longer before reaching her hand up and gently placing her palm against his cheek. He tilted his head to lean into her touch. “Make it make sense,” she whispered.

“What’s that, babe?” He asked.

“How I can still love you.”

“I don’t know,” he said in his own quiet voice. “I just thank Gods that you do.” Lydia didn’t say anything in response to that. “Let me kiss you,” he said earnestly. 

Lydia quickly retracted her hand and sat up in bed. The demon silently cursed himself, he’d pushed it too far too soon. 

“What time is it?” Lydia asked, getting out of bed. 

Beetlejuice sat up and watched her walk over to the kitchen and pour herself a cup of coffee. 

“Is it morning?” She asked.

He shook his head. “We’re in the inbetween, there isn’t morning or night here.”  


“What about in The Netherworld?” She asked.

“It’s always night there.”  


“Then how does anybody know when they need to be anywhere?”

“Well,” he said, dragging himself out of bed and walking over to her. Without thinking she held her half-drunk mug of coffee out to him and he took it without a word, took a gulp and handed it back. The two still had the same ease around each other that they had the summer they met. It couldn’t be erased by years or anger. “Most people _choose_ to be places so most places are open sporadically, running on the internal clock of whoever’s in charge. But most parts of The Netherworld tend to sync up with the timezone of the part of the living world they’re beneath.”

“So it’s EST here?”

“ _Here_ ain’t anywhere, doll. But we can go to The Netherworld.”

“Can we go back to the house?”  


There was a silence between them. Beetlejuice had to fight the urge to yell at her, tell her no and tie her to the bed to make sure she didn’t try to leave. But forcing her to stay hadn’t ended well before and he wasn’t stupid enough to think it would again.

“I think so,” he said.

“But you’re not sure?” She asked, setting down her now empty mug of coffee. 

“No, I’m not.”

“Why?”

“Because you died in the cemetery. Your soul should be bound to haunt there the way the Maitlands haunt your house.”

“But…the mirrors.”

He nodded. “I know.” He waved his hand and her mug was full of coffee once more. She picked it up and kept drinking without question. “That’s why I’m not sure. Being dead doesn’t suddenly make you not a witch.” Lydia opened her mouth to protest but he kept talking, not giving her the chance to butt in. “Don’t give me that _I’m not a witch_ thing again, babe. You created a fucking _portal_ to transport you from the inbetween to the cemetery outside yer house. You’re a witch if ever there was one. Now you’re just a ghost witch.”  


Lydia took a gulp of the scalding coffee and practically slammed the mug down on the counter, coffee sloshing over the edges, vanishing as soon as they hit the countertop. “Can we try?”

He sighed. He couldn’t hold back his annoyance anymore. “Why? Is that what you want? To go haunt that house with the Maitlands for all of eternity?”

It wasn’t what she wanted. She knew that. But she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right, especially not first thing in the morning (if it even really _was_ morning).

“Beetlejuice,” she said in exasperation. “Can we please just try? I just…want to say goodbye. Then we can come back here and read or something.”  


At that the demon perked up a bit. She wasn’t asking to leave him again, she was saying they’d come back here together; he prayed she meant it. 

“Okay, dollface.” He stood up and retreated back to the bedside to retrieve his jacket then strode over to his coffin door. He held his arm out and suddenly she was beside him. “Shall we?” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh wow,” she said. “Y’all were such goodie two shoes when you were alive it looks like you were supposed to be allowed to haunt your whole state.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so glad you all are enjoying this sequel! New chapter tomorrow!

The night Lydia Deetz was murdered the Maitlands rushed upstairs to the attic, drew a door and dove into The Netherworld. They got dumped out just outside the waiting room, unlike Lydia they’d never been there. When they died they’d woken up in their house, according to the handbook only those who wish to seek The Netherworld will automatically appear at its door, all others must seek it out.

They stepped into the DMV-like waiting room, cluttered with newly dead corpses, some appearing normal like them, others with knives in hearts and nooses around throats.

“Come on,” Barbara said softly, taking her husband’s hand and leading him over to the receptionist’s desk. 

The redheaded receptionist—Jeanie—looked up and studied the Maitlands for a moment. “You two have been dead awhile,” she said.

Barbara nodded. “Uh, yes, we decided to haunt instead.”

Jeanie nodded. “What brings ya here then?”

“We’re looking for Lydia Deetz,” Adam said. “We just saw her get murdered.”  


“Jeez,” Jeanie said. “I take it she wasn’t murdered where you’re haunting.”  


“No,” Barbara said. “We’re haunting our house and she was murdered in the cemetery outside.”

Jeanie looked perplexed. “Huh,” she said.

“What?” Adam asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing, that’s just a smaller haunting range than usual for good ghosts like you guys—I mean you _seem_ like good ghosts. Don’t strike me as the type to have been big sinners in your day.”

“We weren’t,” Barbara said, not quite understanding what Jeanie was saying.

“Well you should’ve come by sooner, I bet there was a mix up. Good guys usually get their whole hometown, or city or whatever to haunt. It’s only the assholes really we confine to their houses, why do ya think all the movies feature mean ghosts? The good guys are in town getting ice cream,” she laughed a bit, but when she took in Barbara and Adam’s horrified expressions, she stopped. She pulled some paperwork from her desk and handed it to the Maitlands. “If ya fill these out I can have your haunting status changed by the end of the week, then you’ll be free to roam all of…” she looked at the computer. “What were your names again?”  


“Adam and Barbara Maitland,” Adam said. 

She nodded and typed away. “Oh wow,” she said. “Y’all were such goodie two shoes when you were alive it looks like you were supposed to be allowed to haunt your whole state.”  


“ _What!”_ Adam practically yelled. “We’ve been stuck in our house with the god damn Deetzs for years!”

Jeanie gave Adam a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry honey, Juno usually doesn’t have mix ups like this. I’m the lowest level here, I don’t have a hand in writing up the haunting paperwork, I can just put in the edits. So like I said, if you fill this out,” she held the stack of papers out towards them again, “I can get it fixed up for ya.”

Adam snatched the paperwork from Jeanie and took a pen from the cup on the counter, he turned to go sit down and start filling it out when Barbara grabbed his arm. “Adam,” she said sternly. “We’re here for Lydia.”

“Oh, right,” he said.

“What about her?” Jeanie asked as she typed her name in. “Oh wow. Good thing she was murdered this time.”  


“What do you mean _this time?”_ Adam said, appalled.

Jeanie looked back at them. “You’re not her parents,” she said, it wasn’t a question but the Maitlands shook their heads anyway. “You sure seem like it though.” Jeanie shook her head, trying to stay focussed. “Says here poor kid tried to kill herself—twice.”  


“What!” The Maitlands said in unison.

Jeanie nodded. “Yeah, once when she was seventeen and once when she was twenty-two.”

“Seventeen,” Barbara said softly.

“Umhm,” Jeanie said. “Says here she almost jumped off the roof of your house but somebody caught her.”  


“Who?” Barbara said, nervously.

Jeanie clacked away on her keyboard and the Maitlands’ stomachs began to knot themselves in anxiety when they took in the look of horror on Jeanie’s face. Jeanie slowly turned from the computer screen to face the Maitlands.

“This…this can’t be right,” she said, typing away on the computer again. “There must be a mix up.”

“Who was it?” Adam begged. “Please, Lydia is…she’s our friend.”  


“But we never knew that she was…” Barbara’s voice trailed off.

Jeanie looked back at them apologetically. “You didn’t know she was suicidal?” The Maitlands nodded.

“Who stopped her from jumping?” Adam asked again. “Why would it be a mistake?”  


“Because,” Jeanie said, “it says here the person who stopped her from killing herself is the same person who murdered her.”  



	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeanie shrugged, her sympathy for the Maitlands had run dry, they were getting on her nerves, acting like they were the only dead people to watch some breather they liked get murdered by a demon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEW CHAPTER! Hope yall like it :) New chapter coming on Wednesday. Stay safe and WEAR A MASK.

Only one of Lydia’s floating mirrors was still outside Beetlejuice’s coffin. The bathroom mirror. Lydia turned to Beetlejuice, worry painted across her face. “Where’s my vanity mirror?”

Beetlejuice had a pretty good idea where it was, but he didn’t want to say so. “I’m not sure,” he said, which wasn’t a total lie. “Let’s find out.” He didn’t _want_ to find out. He didn’t want to see her face when his suspicion was proven correct, but he knew she wasn’t going to let this go until she saw for herself.

The two climbed through her bathroom mirror and into an empty house. Lydia walked softly into her bedroom to find it completely barren. No bed. No books. No vanity. Beetlejuice heard her inhale softly and sharply, despite no longer needing to breathe, it was a habit most ghosts held onto for awhile after death. 

“Lydia,” he said gently from behind her. 

But she ignored him and took off through the rest of the house, the whole place was empty. She finally made her way to the front door and threw it open to see a FOR SALE sign in the yard. If ghosts could cry, she would’ve broken down. If she were still alive she would’ve hyperventilated. But she was dead. She had no more tears. So she just stared numbly. She was distantly aware of the demon’s hands on her shoulders, gently pulling her back into the house.

“I’m sorry, doll,” he said. “Awhile must’ve passed.” 

It was clear from the leaves on the ground outside, and the chill in the air, that summer was long over, and that the Deetzs had left the haunted house for good. 

“Why wouldn’t they wait for me?” Lydia said quietly. Beetlejuice didn’t answer. Lydia spun around. “But they did, didn’t they?” Still he said nothing. “Because the Maitlands died here and they woke up here. But I woke up in the waiting room…with _you.”_

“Lydia, let’s not fight.”  


“You don’t get to make my choices for me and then tell me I can’t get upset about them.”

“Is that really why you’re mad?” He asked, failing to hide his own frustration. “Because Charles and Delia aren’t here? Because it’s been months? We know now that you can still use mirrors to travel. If you want, we can go back right now and you can summon a mirror that leads to wherever they are. But that’s not why you’re mad, is it?” Lydia was the one to be silent this time. “No,” he said, “it’s not. You’re mad that you’re dead.”  


“Of course I’m mad that I’m dead!” She shouted. And then she remembered. 

The Maitlands. The attic. Without another word she took off running past the demon and upstairs. It hadn’t occurred to her yet that she could’ve just materialized there. Beetlejuice sighed and appeared in the attic and sat down by the window. Lydia burst in to find him sitting there. She looked at him, depleted.

“They’re gone, too, babe.”

“But…they can’t be. They have to haunt here, they can’t leave the house.”  


“Maybe they went to The Netherworld.”

“Why would they do that?” But she knew why. She was dead, and her dad and Delia were gone. _They probably didn’t want to deal with learning to haunt a new family,_ she thought to herself. She sadly had no idea that they were in the waiting room, talking to Jeanie about her. Both she and the ghoul had no idea how warped time truly was and that the ghostly couple was out there, searching for them.

Lydia looked around the attic— _empty_ , just like the rest of the house. She looked back at Beetlejuice. She crossed her arms and looked down at her boots. “Let’s go home,” she said quietly. 

If his heart still beat, it would’ve stopped. _Home._ She wasn’t talking about this house, or what was once her bedroom, she was talking about his coffin. His space. She was choosing again to go with him. Even after everything that had happened, everything she knew now, she was still choosing him. 

He jumped to his feet and strode across the room to her. He took her in his arms and the two were back in her old bathroom. Without speaking they climbed through the mirror and back into the void.

* * *

“But she just died,” Barbara said to Jeanie in frustration. “We _just_ saw him murder her. How can they already be processed and gone?”

Jeanie shrugged, her sympathy for the Maitlands had run dry, they were getting on her nerves, acting like they were the only dead people to watch some breather they liked get murdered by a demon. “Time moves like a mess in the waiting room, sorry folks.”

“Well where did they go? In The Netherworld, I mean?” Adam asked. “Where do people who’ve just died go?”

“Most people go to the dorms,” Jeanie said, “but Lydia went with him. Back to his place I’m assuming.”  


“ _What_!” The Maitlands shouted in unison, eliciting an eye roll from Jeanie. “I don’t understand,” Barbara said. “Why would she do that when he’s the one who killed her?”

Jeanie groaned. “Gods, I don’t know. Probably because the poor thing’s in love with the bastard. And I’m not gonna lie, the dorms suck, so going with him probably seemed like her best bet.”

Barbara ground her teeth together, thinking about how earlier that night she’d encouraged Lydia to tell Beetlejuice that she was in love with him, and now she was dead. Barbara had no way of knowing what had really gone on between the goth and the ghoul; she was just now learning that Lydia had ever been suicidal. 

“Well, can we go see them?” Adam asked.

“Not unless you know how to get there,” Jeanie said. 

“What?” Adam asked in confusion.

“Yeah,” Jeanie confirmed. “Getting to a demon’s door isn’t easy and unfortunately for you two, none of us here know how to do it. We don’t deal with that aspect of the afterlife.”

“Well…” Adam said, clenching his fists in frustration, “who does?”

Jeanie shrugged. “Witches mostly. The girl’s mom would probably know, and you two have been dead long enough to travel to The Netherworld New York Region.”  


“Wait…” Barbara said, uncertainly. “You’re talking about the late Emily Deetz?” Jeanie nodded. “Why would she know how to find Beetlejuice?”  


“Because he came looking for her years ago,” Jeanie said. “I didn’t get why at the time but when he walked in here, carrying her daughter’s dead body, it made sense.” The Maitlands stared at Jeanie in horror and confusion. Jeanie sighed again. “Listen folks, Lydia went with Beetlejuice of her own free will. I don’t know why he killed her and why she’d choose to be with him in life, let alone death, but she did. I can’t tell ya how to find his door, all I can tell ya is where to find a witch who can.”

“But you said—” Adam started to which Jeanie groaned louder than before. “Gods you two are slow,” she cried. “Emily Deetz is a witch, and so is Lydia. If you wanna find that demon’s little goth girlfriend, Emily’s the person to ask.”  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beetlejuice couldn’t remember the last time he’d danced, but her dress was so short and her eyes were so bright, and he had longed to touch her again for what felt like a small eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your sweet comments. I'm REALLY glad you're all enjoying this sequel. I'm so excited for you all to read the rest. Hope everyone's staying safe & wearing a mask. 
> 
> Please consider donating to funds to help the BLM movement & the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement (Beetlejuice & Lydia would want you to). Demand justice for those who've fallen at the hands of hatred, and keep fighting for the rights of those who are suffering from oppression. Hope you're all registered to vote (my American readers).
> 
> I love you all. Stay strong, my inbox is always open, you can follow me on twitter & instagram & tiktok & YouTube @magicalmolly if you ever wanna chat or see more Beetlejuice-themed content. I thank you as always for your readership. 
> 
> Now, on with the show :)

When they returned to the coffin from the haunted house that was no longer haunted Lydia went to bed and didn’t get up for days (or what felt like days, the lack of time made it hard to tell). Beetlejuice still slept next to her every night, and they still barely touched. The only time she let him put his hands on her was when she woke up screaming, her mind trapped inside her nightmares. 

After what seemed like a week, Lydia woke in what felt like the middle of the night. She knew that meant nothing as she looked over at Beetlejuice’s sleeping figure. She was sick of the coffin. Sick of the confines, and the feeling of oppressive loneliness. It was one thing to feel isolated when you were actually alone, it was another thing entirely to feel lonely with someone beside you who had once been your savior from such a fate. 

So she got out of bed and tip-toed over to a wardrobe Beetlejuice had conjured up for her the other day. She opened it to find an array of black dresses, most garnished in lace. She picked an especially saucy one and slipped it on. Then she went to the couch where Beetlejuice’s jacket was strewn and searched in the pockets until she found what she was looking for—chalk. She went to the far wall of the coffin, drew a door and walked through.

* * *

Even though she was dead, Beetlejuice and Lydia still shared the same connection due to her never getting the chance to chant his name again when she was alive. He felt her absence immediately. He shot up in bed, the familiar feeling of being without her began to wash over himself as he cursed silently. He jumped out of bed and fetched his jacket. He knew where she’d gone.

* * *

Beetlejuice followed the pull of Lydia’s energy into The Netherworld, down the winding streets until he found where it radiated from, _Nightshade,_ a tacky nightclub. He sighed. Lydia never would’ve gone somewhere like this when she was alive, but death had made her angry and wild. She was treating it like being a punished teenager, and thus snuck out of the coffin instead of just telling Beetlejuice where she was going.

It didn’t take him long to find her, she was leaning over the bar, taking a drink from the bartender’s hand. He reached out and grabbed her arm, spinning her around roughly, causing some of her drink to spill as he did.

“What’s wrong with you?” He growled.

She smirked at him, she had only died recently, so her ability to get drunk still lingered and Beetlejuice could tell from the hazy look in her eyes that she was already on her way there. 

“Hey there, handsome,” she said, her speech a bit slurred. “You found me. Good job. You always do.”

“Gods, Lydia, why can’t you ever just tell me where you’re going?”

“What’s the fun in that?” She tried to yank her arm back but he held firm. “Besides, I’m already dead, what’re you gonna do? _Kill me?”_ She laughed like what she’d just said was hilarious. 

Beetlejuice sighed. “Lydia, let’s go.”  


She yanked on her arm again, and this time he let go. “No,” she said, her anger from the past few days returning. “I’m not gonna spend eternity in my boyfriend’s coffin.” Beetlejuice tried not to get tripped up over the fact that she still referred to him as her boyfriend. She threw back her drink and slammed the glass down on the bar so hard it cracked. Beetlejuice wondered where she’d gotten afterlife money to pay for it. “Come on,” she said, her mood shifting yet again as she held her hand out to him. “Come dance with me.”

“What?”

She rolled her eyes. “Dancing. Ever heard of it? Come on.”

Beetlejuice went to protest but she grabbed his hand before he could say anything and began to drag him towards the dance floor. 

Beetlejuice couldn’t remember the last time he’d danced, but her dress was so short and her eyes were so bright, and he had longed to touch her again for what felt like a small eternity. So he relented and followed her willingly. She lead them to the middle of the dance floor and turned back to face him, then moved towards him and began to sway her hips with the music. Beetlejuice followed her lead and soon she turned around again and backed up against him and he felt like he was on fire as she began to slightly grind against him, moving back and forth with the bass. Beetlejuice let his hands grab her hips and pull her even closer. She reached up one arm and cupped it behind his neck, leaning her head into the spot where it fit perfectly between his shoulder and neck. He swallowed a primal growl of pleasure and desire as they continued to dance.

Several songs later and Lydia was feeling wobbly and tired. She turned back to face him and placed her palms flat on his chest. “Come on,” she said softly, “let’s go home.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh I can see that,” Emily said. “But the normal can never understand the strange.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY THIS IS SO LATE!
> 
> Today has been so hectic! New chapter on Sunday. Thank you as always for the kudos and comments. Love you all <3

Jeanie pointed the Maitlands towards the door that would lead to the region of The Netherworld where Emily Deetz resided. 

“We don’t usually let regular ghosts travel that way but considering how y'all got screwed by the haunting zoning mix up, I’m sure the higher ups won’t mind too much.” She printed them off a travel pass and waved them off towards the hallway.

Barbara and Adam held hands and headed down the hall that seemed never ending. They found the door to lead to the New York region and exchanged a nervous glance before they opened the door and walked through.

They emerged on a somewhat busy street and realized it was a distorted version of New York City. Adam looked back at the piece of paper with the directions Jeanie had written for them. “Come on,” he said to Barbara.

The two had to take several trains to get to the outskirts of the city where they had to walk the final length to reach the small, yellow cottage where Emily Deetz stayed. She was outside, tending to her garden. She heard the Maitlands and addressed them without turning around. “You’re the ghosts who haunt my daughter.”

The Maitlands froze in their tracks and exchanged a nervous look, unsure of what to say. Emily turned around, smiling. The Maitlands were a bit thrown by how young she looked, unaware of how reverse aging in death worked. “Don’t worry,” Emily said. “I know you’re her friends. What I’m wondering though is why you’ve come to see me. Does Lydia know you’re here?”

“Well, Ms. Deetz,” Adam said, “that’s why we’re here. Lydia is dead.”  


Emily dropped the watering can she was holding, her body went rigid at Adam’s words. “ _What_?” She whispered.

“We’re so sorry,” Barbara said as gently as she could. 

“How?” Emily said.

“Well,” Adam said anxiously.

And then Emily felt it. She felt what they weren’t saying. She felt the pain and fear and concern in their hearts. She clutched her own heart and almost collapsed from the onslaught of pain. The Maitlands raced over to catch her. 

“Lydia, no,” Emily whispered. She felt the need to cry overcome her and cursed the fact that ghosts couldn’t shed tears. Crying was cathartic and necessary and death could be cruel sometimes. 

“Who did it?” Emily asked when she regained her footing.

“We weren’t the only ones haunting Lydia,” Barbara said. “There was this other ghost—a demon—”

“ _No_ ,” Emily said, another wave of pain overcoming her. “Not him. He would never.”

“You _know_ Beetlejuice?”Adam said incredulously.

“Is that the demon’s name?” Emily asked. The Maitlands nodded. “He came to see me, years ago. Asked me to write Lydia a letter for her birthday. He…he _loved_ her. He _still_ loves her. I can feel it. And Lydia loves him. Why…why would he?”

“Unfortunately we don’t know,” Barbara said as gently as she could. “And we also don’t know where she is. She’s not back in the house and she’s not in the newly-dead dorms. The receptionist in the waiting room said Lydia went with Beetlejuice.”  


Emily sighed. “She would.”

“But why?” Adam said. 

“Because,” Emily said as if it should be obvious. “She loves him.”

“But he murdered her!”

Emily gave Adam a smile full of pity. “I can tell you care for my daughter, but you don’t seem to understand her.”

“We try,” Barbara said desperately.

“Oh I can see that,” Emily said. “But the normal can never understand the strange.”

Barbara wrung her hands, unsure of what to say. Luckily Adam filled the space the silence had created. “Jeanie—the receptionist—said you could help us find her.”

“Why do you want to?”

“What?” Adam said, surprised. “Be…because she can’t stay with him.”

“And why not? She chose to go with him, no one made her. He’s who she wants to be with.”

Adam opened his mouth to protest but Barbara spoke up before he could. “We just want to see her again. We want to make sure she’s okay. We want—” Barbara took a shaky breath. “We want to say goodbye.”  


Emily studied Barbara intensely before nodding. “I see. Well then, come inside.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I met you and suddenly I remembered who I had been. I remembered what was like to be Lawrence Orion. What it felt like to be him. I’m not him anymore though, not really. But parts of him come back sometimes. In moments. Memories. Little flickers of light. You did that, Lydia. With you it’s so easy to feel like I’m alive again. But then I wonder what you would’ve thought of the man I was back then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of my favorite chapters. Hope you enjoy :)

Lydia and Beetlejuice returned to the coffin and Lydia retreated off to the shower. Beetlejuice wanted to follow her but realized they weren’t at that point yet. When she was done she found him in bed reading _Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief._ She smirked, something about watching a demon read a children’s book about Greek mythology was amusing. She walked over and crawled into bed beside him. He put the book away and lied on his side to face her. 

“Tell me why you died,” she said bluntly, throwing him for a loop. 

He struggled to regain his false composure. “You know why I died. I killed myself.”  


“But why though? _Why_ did you kill yourself.”

“Lydia…”

“No,” she said firmly. “I’ve held back asking about this for years, but we both know how _I_ died _,_ so I think I’m owed some information from you. What made you so miserable that you did what I tried to do that night on the roof?”

He sighed. “I’ve…never talked about it with anyone.”  


Without thinking she reached out and took his hand in hers, sending chills throughout his already cold body. “Well I’m not _anyone,_ I’m your Lydia. You can tell me anything.”  


He felt the familiar flames inside his chest at hearing her still refer to herself as _his._ Even in death she was too good. So much better than he would ever be.

He sighed again.

“Alright. It was the year 1750, but it started before that.”

“What did?” She asked.

“Daniel.” 

He waited for Lydia to ask who Daniel was but she remained silent, even though she didn’t know who he was, she could tell by the look in Beetlejuice’s eyes what he had done. She squeezed his hand. “Never mind you don’ have to tell me.”  


“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re right, you deserve to know.” Lydia waited patiently for him to continue. “He was my father’s friend. He first came to my room when I was nine.”

“Gods,” Lydia breathed.

Beetlejuice nodded, a sick feeling in his gut, but he kept going, speaking aloud a truth he hadn’t shared in his entire afterlife. This was Lydia. This was _his_ Lydia. She deserved to know every part of him. 

“I tried to avoid him, I’d stay out all night at bars…brothels.” He eyed Lydia to see her reaction, but her attentive and empathetic gaze never wavered so he continued, a bit relieved. “Well, he still found me sometimes. He started beating me when I was thirteen. Eventually I told my father. And then he…well he said he wouldn’t have a sodomite under his roof. He threw me out and told our whole town that I was a sinner.”  


“My town,” Lydia said. It wasn’t a question but the demon nodded.

“I had no money, no prospects. I was on the streets, starving, _dying_. So…I went to work in a molly house.” He waited again for Lydia to ask what that was, but she was smart, she knew. She squeezed his hand. “Well, Daniel obviously came to the house and I…I just couldn’t anymore, Lydia.”

His voice was coated in agony. “I know,” she said softly.

“I killed him.”

Somehow she’d known that too. 

“I was going to go to jail for life, or be executed, or have to live on the lam. I just… _couldn’t._ If I was going to leave this world then I needed to leave it as myself, or what little bit was left of me. And then I was…so alone in The Netherworld, selling my soul would give me freedom, at least it seemed that way at first. But I just ended up giving up the rest of myself. I lost whoever I was when I was alive. I had believed for so long that I would never become that person again.”

“What changed?”

“You.” Lydia’s eyes became glassy. “I met you and suddenly I remembered who I had been. I remembered what it was like to be Lawrence Orion. What it _felt_ like to be him. I’m _not_ him anymore though, not really. But parts of him come back sometimes. In moments. Memories. Little flickers of light. You did that, Lydia. With you it’s so easy to feel like I’m alive again. But then I wonder what you would’ve thought of the man I was back then.”

Lydia let go of his hand and placed her palm against the curve of his jaw. “I don’t care who you were when you were alive. I care about who you are now.”

“And who is that?” He said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Lydia smiled. “The man who saw me when no one else did. My best friend. _My_ _person_.”  


“Lydia,” he said, his voice still scratchy with ache, “I murdered you.”

Her fingers went stiff and she dropped her hand back down. He felt the absence of her touch like a knife pulled roughly from a wound. 

“I know,” she said.

“Do you forgive me?”

“Of course not. But…I can be furious at you and still…love you.”  


He couldn’t help himself, he leaned forward to kiss her but she pulled away. What little joy her words had summoned sunk back down to the depths of him.

“No, Beetlejuice,” she said. “Not yet.”  


“But someday.” 

She bit her lip. What was left of her rational, living brain wanted to tell him of course not. Never. But she was dead, and felt mad. And what was worse was that she felt comfortable in her madness. “Someday,” she said. Then she rolled over and went to sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You were my everything,” she whispered. “But you treat me like I’m just a toy. And alive or dead, I can’t keep existing like this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So glad everyone is enjoying the story! Got a comment from someone saying they wish they had a drawing of Emily. Just saying that if anyone out there wanted to draw fanart I would be SO HONORED and would love to promote it/include it in the chapters, shout yall out on social media etc. But of course no pressure, just having yall read the story is more than enough for me.
> 
> Hope everyone is staying strong. Please wear your masks. Love you all.

The Maitlands followed Emily Deetz into her small house and into the kitchen where she somehow already had two mugs of tea waiting. She turned back around to face the Maitlands, with a shrug she said, “I had a feeling you were coming.” Adam and Barbara sat down at the small, round table and each nimbly sipped at their tea. Emily Deetz sat down opposite them and folded her hands. “So you want me to help you find Lydia?” 

Barbara nodded, swallowing a mouthful of scalding tea. “We don’t know where Beetlejuice’s home is.”

“I’d imagine it’s where all demons’ homes are. Their graves.”

“Their graves?” Adam repeated.

“Yes,” Emily said. “Demons aren’t allowed to take up residence in The Netherworld. You must have a soul to reside here and this demon in question, Beetlejuice, hasn’t got one. So while he can visit here, he cannot stay here for an elongated period of time. If Lydia went with him then I’m sure they’re in his grave as we speak.”  


“What do you mean _in_ his grave?” Adam asked.

Emily sighed, doing her best to remain patient, but while her daughter had built up a tolerance for normal people like the Maitlands, Emily herself wasn’t so strong. 

“I mean his coffin. Beneath the earth. From what I hear some demons turn them into quite cozy homes. Oh don’t look at me like that,” she said, taking in the Maitlands ever-appalled expressions. “They’re nearly all powerful beings and you think they can’t master some simple home decorating? She’s not trapped in some magician’s box, I’m sure Beetlejuice has something resembling an apartment of sorts. I haven’t met many demons during my afterlife but the power he posses practically radiated off him when I met him. Honestly, it’s better she’s with him where they have some privacy and space rather than those terribly crowded newly-dead dorms. I was only in mine for a few days and—”

“Emily,” Adam said, cutting her off, “Beetlejuice _murdered_ Lydia. She’s not better off with him.”  


“I see,” Emily said, conjuring her own mug of tea. The Maitlands were beginning to see that she perhaps possessed some powers of her own beyond those of just being an empath. She took a sip from her cup and studied the Maitlands over the rim. “And how do you know he murdered her? Did you see it happen?”

“Yes!” Adam said frantically, glancing at Barbara for help, but Barbara was somewhat mesmerized by this woman. They’d heard so much about Lydia’s mother—or so they thought—but being before her, Barbara realized that Emily was simultaneously exactly like Lydia and nothing like her at all. But she was also realizing that she didn’t really know Lydia as well as she thought she had. “We saw him stab her!” Adam practically shouted.

“And you weren’t able to stop him?”

“Our haunting paperwork got mishandled when we died,” Barbara said. “Apparently we were supposed to have the entire state of Connecticut but ended up trapped in our own house. Beetlejuice killed her in the cemetery down the hill.”  


“I see,” Emily said again, setting her cup of tea down. “Very unfortunate about the paperwork, I take it you two have been dead awhile. But if there’s a cemetery near your house then I’m sure that’s where the demon’s grave is. It only makes sense.”

“But how do we get…inside?” Adam asked.

* * *

Beetlejuice woke up to see Lydia sitting on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a black silk night robe, a piece of paper in her hand. “What’s that?” He asked. 

“A note from the waiting room,” she said, turning around to face him. 

“What do ya mean?” He sat up and took the paper from her.

_Lydia Deetz,_

_It has come to our understanding that you are currently residing with the demon, Beetlejuice. It states in our records that while you were alive you two were engaged, if you would still like to be joined in matrimony, there are new clauses and benefits that would need to be discussed due to your newly-dead state. If you would like to discuss the possibility of marrying the demon in question, please come by the waiting room and ask for Juno._

_Best,_

_Jeanie._

Beetlejuice finished reading and looked back at Lydia. She didn’t look pleased. “What does that mean?”

He shook his head. “Babe, I honestly don’t know.”  


She eyed him uncertainly. “Fine.”

She got up and walked over to her wardrobe. “What’re you doing?” He asked.

“Getting dressed so I can go talk to this Juno person.”

“What?” He asked in surprise, appearing behind her right as she was undoing the sash of her robe. She spun around clutching the robe closed. “Why would you wanna do that?”

“So I can find out what else you’ve hid from me.”  


“Babe, I’m serious, I don’t know what that letter’s all about. I killed you because you _wouldn’t_ marry me.”

Lydia glared at him. “Or because there was a better form of marriage with me dead. Who knows what ‘benefits’ you’ll get out of this one.” 

“Lydia I’ve never even heard of ghosts getting married.”  


“Shut up,” she mumbled as she pulled a dress from her wardrobe and retreated to her dark room to change.

Beetlejuice sighed and slumped against the wardrobe, waiting for her to return. She stepped out in one of her typical floor-length black dresses, looking like a grim masterpiece. 

“Get some chalk,” she snapped. “Let’s go.”  


Beetlejuice sighed, realizing there was no arguing with her. He drew a door and they stepped through.

They emerged in a crowded waiting room, and unbeknownst to them, the movement of time in the waiting room was so distorted that if the Maitlands had waited a moment longer before going off to find Emily Deetz they would’ve still been there when the goth and the ghoul arrived. Lydia marched up to the front desk, shoving the other ghosts out of the way, ignoring their grumbles and protests. She stood on tip-toe to lean over the counter and look down at Jeanie.

“I’m Lydia Deetz. I’m here to see Juno.”

Jeanie looked up from the cheap romance novel she was reading instead of doing her job. She took in Lydia with her bloody chest and then saw Beetlejuice behind her. She smirked.  “You’re still with him, huh?”

Lydia narrowed her eyes at her. “I’m here to see Juno,” she repeated.

Jeanie laughed and hit a button under her desk. “Door 666,” she said. “She’s expecting you.”  


Lydia shot the receptionist one last glare before heading off down the hall. Beetlejuice followed after her, trying to avoid Jeanie’s laughing gaze as he did. 

Lydia banged on Juno’s door several times and a smoky-voice on the other side called out “Come in, Lydia.”

Lydia barged in, Beetlejuice right behind her. Juno, an old woman with 80s style makeup and a cigarette in her mouth looked up at the couple and smirked. Not as cruelly as Jeanie, but not kindly either.

“Look at these lovebirds,” she said, her voice as scratchy as a cat’s claws.

Lydia marched over to her desk and slapped the letter down. “What’s this all about?”  
Juno took a drag from her cigarette and exhaled the smoke directly into Lydia’s face but still the goth didn’t budge. “You didn’t tell her, Beetle?” She asked, looking past Lydia to the demon at the door.

“Shut it, Junebug, you know I don’t know what that is,” he waved his hand at the paper on the desk.

Juno laughed. “You telling me that when you wrangled this girl into an engagement when she was seventeen years old you didn’t bother looking up all your options? You expect me to believe that you killed this girl before she even made it to middle age without planning to invoke the after-death nuptials?”  


Lydia spun around and shot Beetlejuice another searing glare.

“Doll, I swear, I don’t know what she’s talking about.”  


Juno shrugged and returned her cigarette to its home between her lips. “Maybe he’s telling the truth, Miss Deetz. He doesn’t strike me as the type to do his homework.”

“Just tell me what you’re talking about!” Lydia shouted, her frustration reaching its peak.

“I’m talking about what’ll happen if you marry him now that you’re dead.”  


“ _What_ will happen?”  


“You get half of his powers.”  


“ _What?”_ The two said in unison.

Juno nodded. “But the catch is he gets half of your soul.”

Lydia’s knees almost gave out. She spun back around to face Beetlejuice. “Lydia,” he said, crossing the tiny office to take her hands in his but she yanked them away.

“Don’t touch me,” she seethed.

“I swear, I didn’t know about this.”  


“Like I believe you,” she said. “All you ever do is lie to me! Nothing’s real! You tricked me into giving you your full powers— _forever_. And _now_ you want my soul too? Is nothing enough for you?”

“Half of your soul,” Juno chimed in but Lydia didn’t acknowledge her.

“Lydia,” Beetlejuice said as calmly as he could. “You _are_ enough for me.”

“Clearly I’m not! Not how I was when I was eighteen. Not when I was alive at twenty-seven, not even now, fucking dead sleeping in your bed every night.”  


“Lydia…” he begged.

“We could’ve had a life,” she said, her voice softer this time—sadder. “We could’ve stayed in that haunted house forever. Alive and in love. I could’ve lived to be a hundred and joined you when I was _meant_ to die. Not when you decided I should. Maybe I’d get mad and say your name, sure. But I’d always call you back and you knew that. And even if you were invisible to the world, you knew you’d never be to me.”

“Wow, Beetle,” Juno said from behind them. “You really messed this one up.”  


Beetlejuice glared at her, she just smirked.

Lydia stepped around Beetlejuice and headed for the door.

“Lydia, wait!” 

She stopped short, her hand on the doorknob. She turned around to face him, tears in her eyes, which he couldn’t understand how that was possible: the dead can’t cry.

“You were my everything,” she whispered. “But you treat me like I’m just a toy. And alive or dead, I can’t keep existing like this.”

She stormed out. It wasn’t till she was gone that Beetlejuice realized he was missing the chalk from his pocket.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve been lost for so long,” he said softly, leaning into her sweet-smelling hair. “I was lost in life and in death. I sold my soul. I haunted, and conned, and cheated. And then there was you. I saw you on that roof, soaked from the rain and I knew—I just knew—I needed to have you with me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy :)

Beetlejuice has swiped some extra chalk from Juno and drew himself a door back to his coffin. He found Lydia there, curled up on the couch. She had a copy of _Frankenstein_ open in her lap, but her eyes weren’t on the page, they were glazed over, zoning out. They refocused when Beetlejuice appeared in the room. Lydia slammed the book shut and tossed it aside. 

“Hi honey,” she said sardonically.

“Babe,” he said, walking over to the couch, “let me explain.”  


Lydia leaned forward and folded her hands neatly in her lap. “Okay, dear,” she said with mocking sincerity, “I’m listening.”  
Beetlejuice closed out the rest of the space between them and kneeled down in front of her. The humbling position took Lydia a bit by surprise but she fought to hide it. 

“I did _not_ know about all that,” he said fervently. “Juno’s right, I don’t do my homework. I’m not like you, I don’t remember the last time I read a book before the summer we met.”

“Bullshit,” Lydia said. “You already had your marriage plan in place that summer. You _have_ read the handbook.”  


“I’ve read parts of it,” he said. “Do you know how long that thing is? The only book I evened owned when I was alive was the Gods damn Bible and you think the first thing I wanted to do when I was dead was read a textbook?”  


“That was three centuries ago,” she said, coldly. “And you were just a ghost then. You obviously read it when you sold your soul.”  
He groaned in frustration and let his head fall forward into her lap. Lydia lifted her hands up in surprise as Beetlejuice dug his hands into her knees and let himself collapse against her. She froze. Unsure of what to do. She instinctively wanted to run her hands through his hair and comfort him, but her anger was reigning. She still didn’t believe him. 

“I got desperate after being a demon for a few decades,” he said, his face still pressed to her lap. “I skimmed the handbook and landed on that out. I didn’t read any further for another option. It didn’t even occur to me that there would be more than one.” 

There was a long and painful pause before Lydia spoke again.

“Did you try with others?” 

Beetlejuice went rigid. He knew what she meant. He wished he was aloof to the parts of her question that had gone unspoken. But he knew her well enough after all these years to tell that her soft anger was twice as brutal. He shifted up, leaning back on his heels.

“Answer me.”  


“Yes,” he said.

Lydia jumped to her feet, chalk in hand and marched over to the far wall. Beetlejuice jumped up and raced after her. “Lydia! Wait! _Please._ ”  
Lydia froze in her tracks, hating herself for it. She wanted to have the nerve to storm out and never come back. But the way his voice cracked on that final word made her feel like she was being stabbed all over again. She stood still, the chalk in one hand, poised over the wood, ready to draw a door. She heard the demon come up slowly behind her until only inches stood between them.

“Please, Lydia,” he said again. “Please stay.” He grazed the back of her hair with his hand so lightly that she almost didn’t feel it. “Yes, I tried to get other living girls to marry me. And no, it was never how it was with you. I didn’t care about them. And I know you’re not going to believe me. I know I lost your trust years ago. But, doll…” he took a final step towards her and gently rested his hands on her shoulders. 

Lydia felt tears well in her eyes, unaware that the dead shouldn’t be able to cry. She bit her lip and tilted her head back slightly until it was almost leaning against his chest— _almost._

“I’ve been lost for so long,” he said softly, leaning into her sweet-smelling hair. “I was lost in life and in death. I sold my soul. I haunted, and conned, and cheated. And then there was you. I saw you on that roof, soaked from the rain and I knew—I just _knew—_ I needed to have you with me. And then you could see me. You looked at me and I wasn’t thinking about what the handbook said. I wasn’t thinking about anything but you.” His hands tightened around her shoulders and she exhaled a bit, letting tears run down her cheeks and her head fall back against his chest. “Please,” his voice was nothing more than a ragged whisper. “ _Please_ don’t leave me. I know I don’t deserve you. I never did. Hate me if you have to. Never forgive me. Never even speak to me again, just please don’t go. You’re all I have. Lydia, I look at you and…I’m _home.”_

Lydia pulled away slightly and turned around to face him, tilting her chin up to meet his towering gaze. He noticed the tears on her cheeks. He was shocked, he’d never seen a ghost cry. 

Lydia reached down and took his coarse hand in hers. She gently placed the chalk in his palm and closed his fingers over it. She let go of his hand and took a small step back. He quietly pocketed the chalk and then an agonizing silence hung between them. 

Beetlejuice searched for the right words, but of course there weren’t any, so he settled on the only words he knew to be true: “I love you, Lydia.”  


Lydia felt a sob lodged in her throat. She swallowed it back down and moved towards him before she had the chance to second-guess herself. She took his face in her hands and brought his lips crashing down against her own.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beetlejuice loved the lie of thinking he could always have her, and Lydia loved the lie of thinking she was simple enough to only desire to be claimed by a man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so glad you guys are enjoying this sequel. I really appreciate the kind comments and the kudos. Stay safe & wear a mask, love you all. New chapter on Sunday!

“Mom?” Lydia said breathlessly as she gazed at her mother standing before her in the cemetery. Emily Deetz smiled at her daughter. Lydia took a tentative step towards her, afraid she may not be real. “What’re you doing here?”

“What is it we need to know?” Beetlejuice cut in from behind Lydia.

Lydia turned around, she’d almost forgotten her ghoul was there having been so enraptured by the sight of her mother. 

“Are you here to stop us?” He demanded. “To take Lydia with you.”  


“Beetlejuice,” Lydia chided, shooting him an annoyed glance.

“Of course not,” Emily replied, her voice as calm as ever. “I didn’t try to _take_ her with mebefore and I’m not trying now. I’ve just learned some information I thought my daughter might want to know.”

Beetlejuice huffed. He had nothing against Emily Deetz, but he grew tense around her. He was accustomed to how well Lydia could perceive him, but Lydia’s magic mostly had to do with travel, mirrors, and the pursuit of knowledge. Emily’s empathic powers made the demon beyond uneasy. It was one thing for the woman he loved to see him so clearly, it was another to have her mother, a woman he barely knew, see him as such.

“What is it?” Lydia asked her mother.

Emily Deetz approached her daughter and took ahold of her hands. “Darling,” she said gently. “You’re not dead.”

* * *

Weeks earlier, in Beetlejuice’s coffin, Lydia finally pressed her lips to the demon’s. Her soft hands on his face, the sweet scent of her in the air. Beetlejuice wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to him, but just as quickly as the kiss began, it was suddenly over. Lydia jerked away from him, stepping back, her hand instinctively covering her mouth. She inhaled sharply; he still didn’t understand how she was still breathing and crying. They were both unaware at this point that she was still very much alive.

He opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong but she turned and marched to the room with the shower, and slammed the door shut behind her. Soon the sound of running water followed. The demon sighed, feeling defeated once again. He pulled a book from the shelf— _Pride & Prejudice—_and got into bed to read.

After a small eternity, Lydia emerged from the shower, hair damp and dripping, nothing but a towel wrapped around her. She softly crept over to stand before the bed. Beetlejuice was so engrossed in his book that he didn’t hear her.

“Beetlejuice,” she said softly.

He looked up at her, taking in her state of near nakedness, and then to his complete, and utter shock, Lydia unwrapped her towel and let it fall to her feet. Beetlejuice felt a fire consume him as he took in her naked body; in his opinion, the most beautiful sight in the world. He slowly got up and approached her. He stopped just a few inches in front of her. She gazed up at him, fire in her eyes.

“Well,” she said, “are you going to do something about it?”

He had to repress a primal growl that was bubbling up in his throat. “Do you want me to?”

Lydia inched towards him so that their bodies were just nearly touching. “Yes,” she whispered. 

And this his mouth was on hers again, the kiss more searing than the last. He tangled his hands in her hair and she dug her fingers around his wrists. He moved his arms to wrap around her, pulling her flush against him as he parted her lips with his tongue. 

“Touch me,” she panted against his mouth.

Beetlejuice didn’t hesitate at her command. He slid a hand down her chest, and over one of her breasts, taking her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and pinched it hard. She cried out but didn’t tell him to stop, so he repeated the process with her other nipple. He then ducked his head down and began to suck on them. She knotted her hands in his hair, titled her head back and groaned, giving in to the intoxicating sensation of his tongue on her chilled skin. 

Beetlejuice dropped to his knees before her and began to trail kisses down her stomach until he came to rest between her thighs. He thrust his tongue inside her, drawing a loud cry of pleasure from her mouth. He worked her with his mouth and tongue. Lydia kept mewling and whimpering. Her body convulsed as she leaned forward, resting a hand against one of the bedposts as Beetlejuice continued to devour her. 

Just when she thought she might die all over again from the fiery sensation (even though she wasn’t really dead yet), she moaned louder than ever as she gasped out: “ _Fuck me. Now.”  
_

Beetlejuice practically jumped back to his feet and swiftly maneuvered Lydia so that she was in front of him. He undid his belt buckle and let his pants fall away as he pressed his cock against Lydia’s backside. She arched her back, ready to take him inside her. She leaned into the bedpost for balance and with a grunt of want from the demon, he thrust himself deep inside her. 

He began fucking her roughly and Lydia didn’t protest at all. She had hungered for his affection for days, doing her best to fight the desire for want of holding onto her well-deserved anger. But she couldn’t contain it anymore. She may still hate him for what he’d done, but she also loved and lusted after him and she figured if this was eternity than she didn’t want to endure it untouched and unloved. So as he thrusted into her she crashed her hips back against him, meeting his rhythm head on.

“Gods, babe,” he growled in her ear. “You feel so fucking good.”

“ _Harder_ ,” was all she said in response.

The demon complied. He reached a hand around to wrap around her throat, applying pressure, thinking she no longer needed to breathe. She gasped out at the painful sensation, but knew herself well enough to not be surprised by how much she enjoyed it.

“Ya like that?”

“Yes,” she gasped.

“Try again,” he said. “Do ya like that?”  


“Yes, sir,” she gasped out again, more than willing to submit to their familiar power play.

“Tell me who owns you, Lydia.”  


“You,” she said, even though they both knew that wasn’t true and never had been. It was something they liked to say during sex, it somehow brought them both comfort, the beautiful lie that anyone could ever be a thing for someone else to control. Beetlejuice loved the lie of thinking he could always have her, and Lydia loved the lie of thinking she was simple enough to only desire to be claimed by a man.

“I love you,” he said, panting against the growing tidal wave of pleasure inside him.

“I know,” she said.

And then with a final thrust from Beetlejuice, and a loud cry from Lydia, the two finished together. Lydia collapsed against the bed. Beetlejuice extracted himself from her and pulled his pants back up. Before Lydia could protest, Beetlejuice dragged her up to the top of the bed and tucked the two of them in beneath the blankets. He was still fully clothed, and she was still naked, but she was too exhausted to attempt to do anything about it.

He pulled her in close to him and she let him. “I love you,” he said again. She nodded as she began to drift off to sleep. “Please,” he begged softly. “Say you love me.”  


“Not yet,” she murmured, then the little goth, drifting between alive and dead, fell asleep in the demon’s arms.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But I spent my whole life waiting for someone who understood me, and I thought I’d finally found it when I met you. And then I spent years waiting for you to understand what I needed from you. I won’t spend my death waiting too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any of you have listened to Taylor Swift's new album 'folklore' I think several of the songs match Beetlejuice & Lydia  
> 's vibes in this duology, specifically 'illicit affairs' and 'cardigan' what'd you guys think?
> 
> Glad you're enjoying the story! Stay safe and please wear a mask!

Beetlejuice woke up to see Lydia zipping up one of her dresses, her hair and makeup already done. He sat up in bed just as she turned around, their eyes connecting. It was obvious she was leaving. 

“Where’re you going?”

“Out,” she said curtly.

She started walking over to the coffin’s door to head out to the inbetween. He immediately materialized in front of her. She sighed in annoyance. “Move.”  


“I don’t understand,” he said helplessly. “After last night, I thought…”  


“What?” She snapped. “You thought we were fine because we fucked?”

He bristled at her words. “Babe, no. I just meant—”

“Because we’re not,” she said firmly. “I just…needed you last night. After all that stuff you said I couldn’t stand us not touching anymore.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Everything!” Lydia dropped her head in her hands and tried to calm her breathing. Beetlejuice was still perplexed as to why she _was_ breathing. She finally dragged her head back up and met his gaze. “We have to be more than this,” she said softly.

“What do you mean?”  


“I mean we have to be more than just fights and sex and sad stories.”  


He shook his head, at a loss for words. “Doll, I don’t understand.”  


“Of course you don’t. You never did. That’s why I’m dead. But I spent my whole life waiting for someone who understood me, and I thought I’d finally found it when I met you. And then I spent years waiting for you to understand what I needed from you. I won’t spend my death waiting too.”  


She pushed past him and he let her. He followed her out the door and watched silently as she created a portal to the cemetery and stepped through, swiftly closing it behind her so that he couldn’t follow. He sighed and looked up to where her bathroom mirror still floated above them.

* * *

“It won’t be easy,” Emily Deetz said to the Maitlands. 

“But if Lydia went there then surely you can too,” Barbara said.

Emily smiled. “My daughter is a much more powerful witch than I am.” Adam shook his head in disbelief and Emily laughed. “Oh come now, Adam,” she said calmly. “You can’t be shocked to learn that witches are real. You cohabited in a home with a demon, you saw the supernatural powers he possessed. Is it really so shocking to learn that Lydia possessed some of her own?”  


“Yes,” Adam said flatly.

Emily shook her head. She found normal people like the Maitlands so tedious. “Explain to me again what Lydia’s mirror looked like the night she was…” Emily’s voice trailed off, her calm demeanor wavering for just a moment.

“It looked like ripples on the surface of a pond,” Barbara cut in, saving the woman from having to speak of her daughter’s death. Emily nodded, her eyes were devoid of tears since she was _truly_ dead. 

“Lydia has been using mirror magic to travel to the inbetween and back, possibly even travel throughout time.”  


“I’m sorry,” Adam said, “now you want us to believe that _time travel_ is real?”  


“Oh don’t be silly, Mr. Deetz,” Emily said with a wave of her hand. “I’m not talking about some campy 80s movie, I’m talking about astral travel. The threads that hold reality together are much thinner than you’d imagine. If my Lydia can see demons without calling upon them, and can see ghosts when no one else can, I don’t think it’s too much of a jump to assume she can travel to their realms. Your wife saw the mirror.”  


“Barbara doesn’t know what she saw!”  


“Adam!” Barbara chided.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “This is just all so ridiculous.”  


Emily Deetz crossed her arms over her chest. “Mr. Maitland, I don’t have to help you. Like I said, Lydia made her choice and she chose Beetlejuice. I can see you’re upset that she didn’t choose you—”

“She didn’t choose you either,” Adam shot back, regretting the words as soon as he said them.

Barbara stared at him in horror but Emily simply smiled at him, but this time the gaze was full of ice—so cold it burned. She sat up straight and leaned across the table, leaning in as close to Adam as she could.

“I see you’re used to being the smartest one in the room. But you don’t know a single thing about the afterlife. You and your lovely wife stayed in your house, even after it became _my_ family’s house. And you played happy couple and tried to pretend nothing was wrong. You met _my_ daughter and tried to pretend she was your own. But if Lydia were really yours then you’d know her better and you’d know that there’s more to this story than what you’re telling me.”

“But we saw her—”

Emily Deetz raised her hand to silence Adam. “I know what you two _think_ you saw from your perch up on the hill, sitting in a house that ceased being yours years ago; trying to live a life long lost. But I’m telling you that if my daughter was truly dead, then I would know it. I would _feel_ it.”  


“Mrs. Deetz,” Barbara said as kindly as she could. “The receptionist said she’s dead.”  


Emily narrowed her eyes at Barbara. “Yes, I suppose the DMV workers know best, hmm?” Barbara and Adam were silent. Emily trained her eyes back on Adam. “If Lydia is truly dead then she doesn’t have the afterlife energy to travel to a different region yet outside of the one she died in, and I haven’t been dead long enough to do so either.”

“But…” Barbara said, “Beetlejuice can travel here. You said you’ve met him. Couldn’t he bring Lydia with him?”

“Perhaps he could,” Emily said, leaning back in her chair. “But as I’ve said, Mrs. Maitland, there’s a reason Lydia is with him right now.”

“And you think it’s because she’s in love with him?” Adam scoffed.

“No,” Emily said cooly. “I think it’s because they’re in love with each other. I think—” she picked up her tea and took a sip before placing it down and finishing her sentence, “—that they’re soulmates.”

“Unbelievable!” Adam said, throwing up his hands. He jumped up from his chair and headed for the door. “Come on, Barbara!” But Barbara didn’t follow. He paused at the door when he realized his wife was still at the table sitting with Emily. “Barbara?”

“Adam,” she said gently. “If what that receptionist said is true and Lydia was suicidal then…maybe there is more to the story than we know. It’s evident that we didn’t know Lydia as well as we think we did. If her mother thinks there’s a reason she chose to go with Beetlejuice instead of coming back to the house then we should trust her.”  


“And besides,” Emily said. “Perhaps she did go back and so much time had passed that you two were already gone.” The Maitlands both looked at her incredulously and she laughed. 

“Surely you know that time moves differently when you’re dead.”

“Yes,” Barbara said. “But—”

“It’s not linear dear. Time above and below aren’t horses on a track racing against one another. Time down here is a winding mess. Which is why if you want to find Lydia you need to stop wasting your time arguing with me and actually listen.” The Maitlands remained silent and Emily laughed. “Good. Now follow me.” She got up and headed to her bathroom. Instead of a shower, like in Beetlejuice’s coffin, there was an old-fashioned claw-foot tub. There was also a shinning marble countertop with a large, gold-rimmed mirror hanging above it. “If you want to find Lydia,” Emily said, “this is the only way.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I was barely eighteen when we met. I was alive. It doesn’t matter if you stopped me from jumping off the roof, I still chose you. I’ve never needed you. Even when I missed you the most, I still carried on without you."

Lydia knew he was near when she felt the air still around her, a chill sweeping across the tombstones. She sighed, looking to her side to see the demon standing a few feet off, the early evening mist swirling around his figure, making him look all the more mysterious; he would always be the kind of figure that sent chills down the spines of normal souls, but not Lydia—never Lydia. 

He was holding two styrofoam coffee cups with the logo of the local gas station on the side. She bit her lip, not wanting to reward him with a smile. But she had missed the taste of the cheap caffeinated stuff, and magically conjured coffin coffee just didn’t have the same effect.

“Hey, babe,” he said.

She marveled at how he always looked the most human when he was distraught. She figured it made sense though, if so much of his life had been filled with sorrow and ended in suicide, of course the only times she would see remnants of Lawrence Orion was when Beetlejuice was feeling morose. 

“Hi,” she said. 

She held a hand out for one of the coffee cups, he materialized right in front of her and handed her one. She took a big gulp, letting the cheap, vanilla-coated liquid run down her throat. He watched her continue to drink her coffee, never having any of his own before finally speaking. 

“I’m sorry.”  


She studied him, uncertainly. “For what?”  


“For not being better.”  


“You’ve never been sorry for that before,” she said. He didn’t argue. “You say you don’t deserve me, but you’ve always seemed content with that. Like you don’t bother to stop and think about how lucky you are. I was barely eighteen when we met. I was _alive._ It doesn’t matter if you stopped me from jumping off the roof, I still chose you. I’ve never needed you. Even when I missed you the most, I still carried on without you. When I tried to kill myself a second time it wasn’t because I wasn’t with you, it was because I didn’t know how to be with myself.”  


Beetlejuice still said nothing. So she continued. 

“You always make my sadness about you. You promise you won’t force me to be happy, but then you want perfect explanations every time I’m sad. And I don’t have those, Beetlejuice. I just _am._ I’ve never asked you to give me reasonable explanations for why you behave the way you do. I’ve accepted it. Even when it infuriates me. Even when it makes me want to leave you. I don’t begrudge you for being you. You expecting me to rationalize my sadness is like me asking you to have a soul.”  
Her words crushed him. He tried to remain steady under their weight. He wanted to argue with her, tell her she couldn’t be more wrong. But she wasn’t. Of course she wasn’t. She never really was. She eyed him, waiting for him to say something in response. But to her disappointment all he said was: “Can I sit?” Nodding to the tombstone on which she was perched. Lydia sighed and moved over, making room for him. He sat down next to her, and flicked his wrist, making his coffee cup vanish into thin air. She sighed again. 

“You want the truth?”  


Lydia turned to face him. She nodded.

“Okay, fine. Your sadness scares me because it’s too familiar. I look at you and all I can see is who I was when I was alive. But it makes me furious because you endure it so much better than I ever could.”  


“That’s not true,” she said. “I tried to kill myself twice, you didn’t until you were thirty.”  


“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “You don’t give up on people. You don’t give up on the world. You have this hope inside you that things can somehow get better. I never had that. Even now, dead, sitting beside me, you have that hope in you.”

Lydia chewed on her bottom lip.

“Ever since I sold my soul I’d stopped being afraid of anything. But that night you ran away into this cemetery, all those years ago, I remembered what it felt like to be terrified.”

Lydia inhaled softly, Beetlejuice noticed, still not understanding why she kept breathing so frequently. 

He reached out and gently placed his palm flat on the tombstone next to hers, their fingers barely brushing against each other.

“Without you, Lydia, I may as well not exist.”  


“Is that why you killed me?” She said softly.

He met her icy gaze and nodded. “I regretted it as soon as I did it.”

“Why didn’t you say that sooner?”

He didn’t respond. 

She inched her hand a bit closer to his so that their pinky fingers were overlapping ever so slightly. “You could’ve taken me to my mother as soon as I died, couldn’t you?” She was looking straight ahead now, but she saw him nod again out of the corner of her eye. “Yes,” he said quietly, his words almost getting lost among the mist. She didn’t ask him why he hadn’t. They both knew, and she _was_ done asking questions she knew the answer to. 

“I can be better,” he said earnestly. “I can be better for you.”  


She looked at him again. “I know you believe that.”

“I was good once,” he said, his voice taking on a forlorn, humanistic tone. “When I was Lawrence Orion, I was good. I swear it.”  


“I know you were. But you’re not him now. You haven’t been in centuries, and you can’t expect me to put my eternity in the hands of something that once was.”  
He moved his hand so that it rested halfway on top of hers. “I know,” he said, feeling choked up as he gazed down at their hands against the cool surface of the grave. 

“Did you love anyone?” She asked, startling him with the change of subject. “When you were alive? Did you fall in love with any women?” 

He tore his gaze away from their hands back up to meet her stare. “No,” he said. And it was the truth.

“Any men?”  


He didn’t answer. Lydia nodded, accepting the silence as answer enough. She had suspected it for awhile. 

“What was his name?”  


“Louie,” Beetlejuice said, practically choking on the word. He hadn’t spoken it out loud during his entire afterlife. 

“He left you,” Lydia said. She didn’t ask because she just _knew._ The older she got, the stronger her empathic powers became. And even though she had no idea that she was still alive in that moment, still aging, still growing wiser with every moment, she could feel the slow swell of her powers begin to bubble to the surface of her mind and soul.

“He was supposed to protect you, from Daniel. And he didn’t. That’s why you’re always afraid I’ll never come back. Because Louie didn’t come back.”  


“Babe,” he said, his hand going stiff against hers. “How do you know all that?”  
She shifted her hand so that she was finally grasping his in her own. “Because, I’m a witch.” She gave him a small smile, and he couldn’t help it, even though her words had weighed him down with melancholy, her smile began to wash that all away. 

“Give me one last chance, Lydia. Let me prove to you that I can be better. That _we_ can be better together than we are apart.”

He gripped her fingers as tight as he could, trying to fight off his own growing sadness. He felt more longing for her acceptance than he ever had before. He knew this would truly be his last shot. He didn’t have the hold over her now that he once had. If she chose to leave him again, that would truly be it. She would be lost to him forever.

“Okay,” Lydia said. “One last chance.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Darling, there are so many things in this world that you have to learn how to do on your own, magic and love are two of those things.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not much to say, I think this chapter speaks for itself, so enjoy :) new chapter friday.

“What do you mean she’s not dead?” Beetlejuice said, stepping up beside Lydia. “How…how can that be?”  


Lydia just gazed at her mother—speechless. “But…” she said slowly, “I was in The Netherworld. They processed my paperwork. I have—” she gestured to the stab wound in her chest.

Emily nodded. “Yes, that isn’t the most pleasant thing, but have you noticed you can still feel the ache? The dull memory of the pressure of the knife?” Lydia nodded.

“Wait,” the demon said, looking at her, “you can?”  


Lydia turned to meet his gaze. “Yes. Can’t you feel your…throat? Your…voice.”

“My voice is stuck like this from the noose, yes. But I can’t feel it. Why didn’t you say something?” Lydia opened her mouth, but she had no words. “Oh Gods,” the demon said softly, realization finally sinking in. He had wondered why she still breathed so often, why she was able to cry, why she was hungry so much, and tired so frequently. Because she wasn’t dead. She never had been. And he’d been keeping her soul in a coffin when her body was alive somewhere. He looked at Emily. “How do you know?” He said. “I mean…where is she?”

Lydia absentmindedly grabbed ahold of his wrist, her fingers digging in, trying to find stability and comfort in him as she so often did. He was relieved she wasn’t demanding if he had known about this; Lydia truly knew in her heart that he hadn’t. Even at his most demonic, she knew he would never trick her into thinking she was dead when she wasn’t. 

“Her body is in a hospital in New York,” Emily said. 

“But The Netherworld,” Lydia said. 

“Yes, I’ve heard about the receptionist in this cemetery’s office,” Emily said. “Jeanie I believe?” She glanced at Beetlejuice. “An old friend of yours?”  


“Ms. Deetz,” he said, “I promise you I didn’t know Lydia was still alive.”  


“Relax,” Emily said with one of her eerily calm smiles. “I know you didn’t.” She turned her gaze back on her daughter. “Apparently Jeanie is beginning to develop a reputation of messing up the paperwork of the recently deceased. She filed your friends, the Maitlands’, paperwork so poorly they were bound to only haunt their house when they were meant to be allowed to haunt the entire state.”

“What?” Beetlejuice said, even _he_ found that shocking. He’d heard of some truly good ghosts getting wider haunting privileges, but it had never even crossed his mind as to why stiffs as good and boring at the Maitlands were stuck in their house. He had always figured they’d done at least once seriously sinful deed during their lifetime. 

“Jeanie’s been let go,” Emily said.

“What does that mean?” Lydia asked.

Beetlejuice placed his other hand on top of where Lydia’s still gripped his wrist. “It means they’re removing her soul,” he said. “A demon with none of the powers.”

“That’s right,” Emily said. “She’ll be confined to her coffin for a hundred years. It will pass quicker for her than it will for the living world, but still, not very pleasant. However, as your mother, I can’t help but feel it’s what she deserves.”  


Lydia nodded numbly, trying to take this all in. “You said…I’m in a hospital? Why?”  


“Because,” her mother said, “you’ve been in a coma for over a year.”

* * *

Lydia got out of the shower a and was looking in the mirror when the surface began to ripple and change the way it did when she was summoning her mirror magic. But this time she wasn’t the one doing anything. She leaned in closer to examine the surface when suddenly she wasn’t looking at her reflection anymore, but at her mother; a younger version of her, one she’d only ever seen in photographs.

She jumped back, her heart leaping up into her throat. For a moment she thought she was hallucinating. “Mom…?” She said nervously.

“Hello, darling.”  


Lydia opened her mouth in a silent sob as she threw herself at the mirror, her hands gripping its edges, tears in her eyes. Emily noticed the tears her daughter shouldn’t still be able to cry and made a note of it, but didn’t say anything.

“How’re you here?” Lydia asked. “How did you know where I was?”

“Some friends of yours told me.”

Emily stepped to the side and Adam and Barbara stepped into view. Lydia gasped again. “Adam? Barbara?”  


“Lydia, oh thank goodness! You’re okay!”  


“I am. Well, I’m dead, but other than that, yes I’m okay. What’re you doing here?”

“We wanted to see you,” Barbara said, in her familiar lilting voice that Lydia hadn’t realized how much she’d missed hearing until that very moment. 

“How did you know I died?”

“We saw it,” Adam said, his voice sounding accusatory. 

Lydia said nothing.

“Lydia, honey,” Barbara chimed in. “Where…where are you? The woman in the waiting room, Jeanie I think her name was, she said you left with…Beetlejuice.”

Lydia knew in that moment that she couldn’t let them know the truth. If they saw Beetlejuice kill her then she knew they’d be sent into a full blown panic to find out where she was. They barely understood her relationship with the demon when she was alive, she knew they’d never understand it in death—she herself barely understood it.

“I’m in Beetlejuice’s coffin.”

Barbara gasped softly, and Adam’s brow furrowed in anger.

“Lydia,” Adam said. “We saw him kill you. _Why_ are you there? Are you,” he inhaled sharply, even though he really didn’t need to breathe. “Are you trapped?”  


“No,” Lydia said. “I…I asked him to kill me.” An agonizing silence overcame the two ghosts and the girl who was almost. 

“Lydia,” Barbara said, her voice coated with sorrow. “Why would you do that?”  


“Because if I killed myself I’d be sentenced to an eternity of civil servitude, but if I was murdered I’d be free to carry out my afterlife as I please.” This _was_ true at least.

“And you want to spend it with Beetlejuice?” Adam said with vitriol.

Lydia sighed. “I don’t expect you two to understand. You never did.” She knew her words hurt them, but she couldn’t be bothered to care anymore. She wondered if death or maybe Beetlejuice’s company was making her cruel.

“Why did you want to die?” Barbara asked.

“Because living was too hard,” this wasn’t a complete lie. It had been the reason she’d tried to kill herself several times before; something she didn’t know that the Maitlands knew. 

“Listen,” Lydia said, “I’ve been back to the house, it’s empty. My dad and Delia left after I died. I know how long it took you two to get used to haunting them, I doubt you want to try and learn to haunt whoever moves in next. And now that you know I’m okay maybe it’s time for you two to…move on.”  


“Move on?” Barbara said.

Lydia nodded. “Make a home for yourselves in The Netherworld,” Lydia also didn’t know about their mixed up haunting paperwork. The Maitlands hadn’t even stopped yet to consider that they could go exist anywhere in the state of Connecticut. “Don’t worry about me, please. I’ll be okay. And I can use mirrors to find you if I ever need to.”  
Barbara wanted to ask Lydia why she hadn't told them about the mirrors and the magic and the suicide attempts, but she knew the answer and it hurt. Her and her husband really never did know Lydia, they only knew their idea of her—a sad girl they thought they could save. The two normal, boring, good ghosts could never truly fathom how a demon could be both a savior and a murderer, or how anyone could ever be as sad as Lydia was every day of her life.

“You’ll come find us,” Barbara said. “If you ever need us?”

Lydia nodded. “I will.”

Adam had remained stoic and silent throughout all of this and finally spoke up. “We love you, Lydia. You know that right?”  


Lydia smiled. “I do. I love you guys, too.”

The ghostly couple nodded and receded from view and Lydia’s mother took their place. Emily looked over her shoulder to make sure the Maitlands were out of earshot before looking back at her daughter. “You lied to them.” It wasn’t a question, but Lydia nodded anyway. “Because they wouldn’t understand.”  
“Yes,” Lydia said. 

“Will I understand?” Emily asked.

“I don’t know,” Lydia said with a shrug. 

“ _Did_ he kill you?” Emily asked, not judgmentally, but with honest curiosity. “That demon I met years ago.” Lydia nodded again. Emily examined her daughter. “Are you sure?”

“I…what?” Lydia asked in confusion. “Yes, he stabbed me. Why would I not be sure of that?”  


“Because the afterlife is a tricky thing, and everything is not always as it seems. When I first woke up in the waiting room I didn’t remember my own name or how I’d died. It took me weeks to come back to my senses, and even then my memories surrounding my own death were murky. It felt like an eternity before I felt fully like myself again; before I could remember the hospital, and the machines, and your beautiful face—the last thing I saw before it ended.”  
Lydia felt more tears brimming behind her lashes. “Are you saying I’m misremembering how I died?”

“I’m saying that death is just another type of life. Maybe The Netherworld is where our souls spend eternity, or maybe there’s another transition yet to come. Maybe this is all a fever dream and you and I are both alive still, safe in our beds and your father is going to come wake us soon and tell us that breakfast is ready. Maybe we died centuries ago and our entire modern lives are a fabricated memory. Maybe that demon you love murdered you, or maybe there’s more to the story. But I sense it is the latter.”  


“Why wouldn’t he tell me if it was?” Lydia asked.

“I suspect he knows that this is one of those memories you must recall on your own.”  


A tear escaped Lydia’s eye and rolled down her cheek, the sight of it confirmed Emily’s suspicions that the story the Maitlands had told her of her daughter’s death was not entirely accurate, even if the ghostly couple and her daughter both believed it to be. 

“Can you come through the mirror?” Lydia asked softly.

Emily smiled and shook her head. “No, darling. My mirror magic isn’t as strong as yours. But you can come through to me. You can come here.”  


Lydia made no move to climb through the mirror, and Emily hadn’t expected her to.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lydia asked. “About the magic.”  


“Darling, there are so many things in this world that you have to learn how to do on your own, magic and love are two of those things.”  


“Is it wrong?” Lydia whispered through her new freely falling tears. “To love him?”  


“Perhaps,” Emily said calmly. “But that doesn’t make you love him any less, now does it?”

Lydia wiped at her tears. “I miss you, mom.”

“I know, darling,” Emily said, her image in the mirror beginning to flicker. “I will always be here. Until the last star in the night sky goes out, I will always be here if you ever need me. All you have to do is look.”  


The image dissolved and Lydia’s own reflection was the only thing looking back at her.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He had never met someone so calm. He was accustomed to Lydia with her manic changes in mood. Her constant anger. Her vibrant passion. Emily was the exact opposite. Subdued yet still all knowing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's chapter is very short, but don't worry long ones are coming! I will only be posting on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for the remainder of the book due to craziness with work and life Sunday postings will be no more. So sorry! But I still deeply appreciate your readership and am so grateful for all of you!

Emily took in her daughter’s stunned expression, the tombstones blending into a blur behind her. 

“How can she be in a coma?” Beetlejuice asked, pulling Emily from her daze. “She…” Beetlejuice felt himself choking on the words. “She was stabbed. How would that put her in a coma?”  


“Oh come now, demon,” Emily said in a voice that Beetlejuice found infuriating. He had never met someone so calm. He was accustomed to Lydia with her manic changes in mood. Her constant anger. Her vibrant passion. Emily was the exact opposite. Subdued yet still all knowing. “You must remember what happened after Lydia was stabbed.”  
Beetlejuice noticed how Emily avoided mentioning _who_ had stabbed her daughter. He figured it was not out of curtesy for his feelings.

“What’d you mean?” Lydia asked, turning her gaze to Beetlejuice.

“You didn’t die here,” Emily said. 

“Well we’ve already established that she didn’t die at all,” Beetlejuice snapped. 

“Yes,” Emily said, “but you assumed she’d stopped breathing when she hit this cemetery ground, even when you saw the ambulance arrive.”  


“Ambulance?” Lydia asked.

“Of course, darling. The Maitlands called 911 as soon as they saw what happened.”

“And the operator could hear them?” 

“There was nothing strange about a phone call,” Emily explained. “The 911 operator had no reason to believe ghosts were calling so of course they could hear them. Now, if they had been looking at the Maitlands, then it might’ve been a different story.”

“Did you see the ambulance?” Lydia asked Beetlejuice.

“I did,” he said. “But I thought…I don’t know, doll,” he admitted, growing ashamed the longer Emily Deetz looked at him. “We didn’t have ambulances and stuff like that when I was alive. I’d never actually seen one before. I had assumed you were already dead and they were just moving the body.”  


Lydia could tell by the obvious shame on his face that he was telling the truth. “What’s my mom talking about though?” She asked. “What happened after…” she let her voice trail off. Since the goth and the ghoul had made up they had stopped openly discussing her murder (or what they’d _thought_ was her murder) because, as you can imagine, it’s a tough topic for any couple to have to grapple with; one stabbing the other and whatnot.

“I told you I regretted it as soon as I did it,” he said. Lydia nodded. “Well, you backed away and…you fell and hit your head. On a grave.” Emily inclined her head towards the demon, causing him to sigh in shameful frustration. “My grave.”

Lydia stared at him for a moment, then slowly lifted her hand up to the back of her head, and sure enough her fingers came away sticky with blood. _How have I never noticed this before?_ She thought to herself. 

“The dead tend to only see what they want to see,” Beetlejuice said, answering her unspoken question. “Or…the _almost_ dead for that matter.”

“Where am I?” Lydia asked her mother. “Where’s my body.”

“A hospital in New York.”

“Take me there.”  



	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...her lips were the ocean and he was ready to drown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a longer chapter for your Monday! Enjoy :)

Beetlejuice had tried not to eavesdrop on Lydia while she was in the bathroom talking to the mirror, but he’d heard the Maitlands’ annoyingly shrill voices enough times to recognize them even through magical glass. When Lydia finally emerged he tried to make it seem as though he was engrossed in a book ( _Dracula),_ but Lydia gave him a knowing look. He sighed and tossed the book aside.

“Did you use the mirror to see the Maitlands?”

“Would you be mad if the answer was yes?”

“No,” he said, and he meant it.

“I didn’t.”  


“Lydia, I heard them.”  


“I know, but I didn’t contact them.”  


Beetlejuice rolled his eyes. “You’re telling me that now the Maitlands can use mirror magic?”  


“No, but my mom can.”

“You…saw your mom?”

Lydia nodded. “The Maitlands had gone looking for her, they wanted to see me. To make sure that I was okay.”  


“And what did you tell them?”  


“I told them that I asked you killed me.” He had no response for that. “I didn’t want them to worry.” He nodded, still unsure. He slowly rose to his feet. “And your mother?” He said. 

“Could she…go through the mirror? Like you do?”

“No,” she said softly. “I could’ve gone through to her but…” her gaze dropped to the floor.  


“You didn’t?”

Lydia looked back up and met the demon’s stormy gaze, usually full of fire, his eyes now held the muted tones of the sea. “No, I chose to stay here. With you.” Beetlejuice felt his entire body go rigid, terrified he had misheard her. She held his gaze steady. “I chose you, Beetlejuice.”

He inhaled softly though he didn’t need to and moved across the room to her in just a few steps. His hands found her face and he brought his mouth crashing down against hers, tangling his fingers through the waves of her hair; her lips were the ocean and he was ready to drown. Lydia didn’t hesitate in reciprocating the kiss. She _had_ chosen. And it was him. It had always been him. 

It took only a few moments of kissing before the two had tangled their legs up together and crashed down on the floor. Lydia laid down on her back as the demon tugged at the sash keeping her robe tied. He planted kisses down the center of her chest as she wrapped her legs around his waist. 

“I love you,” she whispered.

The demon froze again, letting her words seep into his skin in a hope that they might become a part of his very being. He dragged himself back up from where he’d made his way down to her stomach, and gazed into her eyes. “You do?”

She smiled. “I always have.” He kissed her. “Marry me,” she mumbled against his icy lips, and again her words stilled him. He pulled away slightly. “Lydia…I…I can’t. It was me wanting that that ruined everything in the first place. Everything that went wrong, it was my fault. I’m sorry,” he sunk back onto his knees, looking down at her. “I can’t.” To his surprise, and somewhat horror, Lydia laughed. “What…what’s funny?”  


“That was your last chance,” she said through a laugh-coated grin. “And you passed.” He still didn’t understand. She shifted so that she was sitting up on her own knees in front of him. She took his face in her hands. “I never wanted to be married. I wanted you, but you made me believe marriage was the only way it could possibly work, because you were too afraid to try otherwise.” He realized now what she meant. He smiled down at her. “So?” Lydia said with a smirk, drinking in his realization with amusement. “Marry me?”  


The demon laughed deep in his throat as he wrapped her up in his arms and brought his mouth to hers once again. “Never.”

* * *

After Emily’s mirror faded back to show her nothing more than her own reflection she went back out into the kitchen where the Maitlands were waiting. “Well, there you go,” she said. “You’ve seen her.” She gestured to her door, but the Maitlands didn’t move. Emily sighed. “What are you two so afraid of?”  


“Excuse me?” Barbara said.

“You’re dead,” Emily said. “There’s nothing left to lose. Go and live your afterlife. Go and do something with your eternity. Stop holding on so tightly to what once was.”  


The Maitlands still didn’t know what to make of this woman. She was so much like Lydia, and yet so different. They both wanted to beg her to help them find Lydia so that they could stay with her forever; pretend she was their daughter. But it was what they had been doing when they all stayed in the haunted house together, and it hadn’t worked then. Lydia had chosen time and time again to find solace in Beetlejuice. They had never understood why or how anyone could find him comforting, but now, meeting her mother with her cool demeanor and somewhat unsettling energy it all began to make sense to them. Coupled with learning how many times Lydia had tried to end her life before, while the Maitlands couldn’t comprehend suicide they could start to understand how a girl obsessed with the darkness of death would only feel understood by a creature that was the embodiment of darkness itself.

They wanted to stay with Lydia, but Lydia clearly didn’t want to stay with them, and Emily Deetz—no matter how much they had hoped—wasn’t some fairy godmother there to grant their wishes. They had an eternity ahead of them now, they had gotten away with pretending they were still alive for years, now it was time to face the reality of death.

Adam looked at Barbara and held his hand out for hers. His wife wrapped her fingers with his, they nodded to Mrs. Deetz and then they were gone.

Once Emily was alone in her own house again she sighed in exhaustion from the energy entertaining the Maitlands had required. Then she appeared in the cemetery where she was buried. All ghosts can haunt where they’re buried, regardless of if they died there or not, and Emily had been a good enough person whilst alive that she had free reign to haunt the whole of New York City. 

Once she was standing before her tombstone she looked to the empty plots of land on either side of the stone. Spots saved for Charles, and Lydia. Her grave was the only one there. Lydia Deetz was alive.

Emily’s hand flew to her chest, resting over her dead heart, unsure of how to process this realization. She had suspected something was amiss, but seeing the proof in the pudding before her was an entirely different feeling. She felt short of breath even though she didn’t _need_ to breathe. She sank to her knees in the damp grass and looked up at the grey sky. “Lydia,” she said, “where are you?”

* * *

Lydia woke up naked on the floor, wrapped in the demon’s arms. She wondered what time it was above and below. She decided it felt like morning enough to her so she got up and got dressed. She fixed herself a cup of coffee, admiring Beetlejuice’s shape against the shadows of the coffin as she sipped her drink. When she was done she tiptoed over to where his jacket had been flung and took out a piece of chalk. She kneeled down by him and prodded him lightly on the shoulder.

“Hmmm?” He said, still half-asleep.

“I’m going to The Netherworld, I’ll be back in a few hours.” 

She stood to go but he caught her wrist, pulling her back down. “Why’re you going there?”

“To see the Maitlands.” It was an easy lie.

“They were just here.”

“Time moves differently,” she said with a relaxed smile. 

Beetlejuice smiled back through his bleary-sleep-soaked gaze. He squeezed her wrist once and then rolled over and went back to sleep. Lydia got to her feet, drew a door, and stepped through. 

She emerged in the waiting room and shoved her way to the front of the line to where Jeanie was handing a young girl with a knife in her eye a clipboard full of paperwork. Lydia watched in horror as the young girl shuffled away before looking back over the counter at Jeanie, ignoring the groans of annoyance from everyone she’d just cut in front of. “Good Gods, what happened to her?”  


“Didn’t put the silverware facedown in the dishwasher,” Jeanie said with a shrug, taking out a nail file. Lydia waited for Jeanie to tell her to get to the back of the line but it became evident fairly quickly just how little Jeanie cared. “What’d ya want, beetlebabe?”

“Excuse me?”  


Jeanie laughed. “You’re Beetlejuice’s girl, right?” Lydia nodded. “Well everyone in here can’t believe he got anyone, let alone a breather, to stay with him _willingly._ We heard the spat you two had in Juno’s office the other day, very entertaining. Can’t believe a gal as pretty as you is in love with him.” Jeanie laughed as did some of the office staff further back from the front counter. “So anyway,” Jeanie said, “everyone’s been calling ya beetlebabe.”  


Lydia rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. I need help finding the address of a guy who died in the 18th century.”  


“Oh gee, how specific, got a name?”

“Louie.”  


“Louie what?”  


“I…don’t know.” Jeanie laughed and Lydia clenched her hands into fists. “He died not that long after Beetlejuice did.” _That_ shut Jeanie up. 

The receptionist dropped her nail file and met Lydia’s gaze. “How do you know anything about when Beetlejuice was alive?”  
It took Lydia a second to realize the look in Jeanie’s eyes was jealousy. She smirked, standing up a bit straighter and crossing her arms. “Because, I’m his _babe.”_

Jeanie pursed her lips. “Still isn’t enough,” she said. 

“He died in the same place.” Lydia really had no idea if that was true, but people didn’t live too long back then, let alone poor people, especially those in the sex work trade. There were no health regulations or safety laws; it was a dangerous profession. The chances that this Louie person had lived very long or that much farther away at the end of his life after Beetlejuice died, seemed slim. 

Jeanie practically growled at Lydia as she started typing furiously away at her computer. After what felt like a small eternity she scribbled something down on a piece of paper and slid it over to Lydia before picking back up her nail file and spinning her chair away from Lydia, making it clear that there interaction was complete. 

Lydia stepped out of line and looked down at the piece of paper. It was an address for Louie Canis. 


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The way any ghost becomes a ghoul,” she said. “He sold his soul. Three centuries ago. He’s been Beetlejuice for far longer than he was ever Lawrence. And he’s been mine far longer than he was ever yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new chapter Friday :)

No one had knocked on Louie’s door in decades. So he was startled out of his half-drunken stupor when someone did. He shuffled to the door and opened it to see Lydia standing there. But to him she looked like a harbinger of death itself. If he wasn’t already dead he would’ve been worried. But since he _was_ deceased (and not at all recently), he was simply confused.

“I think you have the wrong residence, Miss.”  


“Are you Louie Canis?”  


He nodded.

“Then I have the right residence. My name is Lydia Deetz, I was murdered by a demon named Beetlejuice.”  


“I’m…I’m terribly sorry, Miss, but I’m afraid I don’t understand—”

“When this demon was alive his name was Lawrence Orion. I believe you were his lover.” Louie’s eyes grew wide, but he said nothing. “I’m not only Beetlejuice’s murder victim,” she continued calmly, “ _I’m_ his lover. I was wondering if I might come in and ask you some questions.”  


Louie nodded numbly and stepped aside to let the gothic beauty into his small house. Lydia walked past him and into his small sitting area which was cluttered with empty liquor bottles. Lydia pretended not to notice as she turned back around to face him.

“Lawrence killed you?” He asked.

Lydia nodded. “Yes. But we knew each other before that. I met him a decade ago.”  


“Lawrence is a demon now?” Louie couldn’t wrap his mind around the concept. “How did that happen?”  


“The way any ghost becomes a ghoul,” she said. “He sold his soul. Three centuries ago. He’s been Beetlejuice for far longer than he was ever Lawrence. And he’s been mine far longer than he was ever yours.”  


“I don’t understand,” Louie said, “why would you continue to… _be with_ the man who murdered you? _Why_ did he murder you?”

“It’s complicated. Why did you abandon him?” Louie was silent again. He was gobsmacked by this gothic girl with her bitter words. “I know the story of how he died,” she said, thinking back to what her mother had said to her. “And I know there’s more to it than what he’s telling me.”

“What has he told you?”  


“That Daniel raped him and abused him repeatedly so he murdered Daniel and then killed himself.” Louie pressed his lips together, with no idea how to respond. “He hanged himself, you know. I wonder what his voice sounded like to you. Because I’ve never heard Lawrence Orion’s voice, I’ve only heard Beetlejuice’s. It’s raspy, as if smoke itself had a sound. Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful. _He’s_ beautiful. But he had a life and it ended, and I want to know the real reason why.”  


“You said it yourself. Daniel…well he hurt Lawrence so Lawrence hurt him and he didn’t want to risk execution.”

Lydia cocked an eyebrow at the older ghost. “So to risk execution he hanged himself?”  


“Look,” Louie said, growing frustrated, “he’d tried to kill himself before. Laudanum mostly. I had my fingers down his throat on more then one occasion so don’t act as though he was murdered.”  


Lydia gave Louie a calm smile, one she had practiced and perfected on her entire walk there. It looked eerily similar to her mother’s. “I never said he was. But I think he wasn’t meant to die alone.”  


“What are you—” Lydia began approaching Louis and even though she was half his size he nervously took a step back from her. “I think you and Lawrence Orion made a pact to run away together. I think you never showed up. I think Daniel found him long after you were supposed to have come. I think your cowardice killed Lawrence Orion.”

Louie gazed down at Lydia. She was nightmare incarnate. She was a perfect match for Beetlejuice. Death had hardened her into everything she wasn’t bold enough to be in life; to unleash and embrace the darkness she had felt inside her all along. 

“How do you know all that?”

Lydia smiled. “I know lots of things. It’s what I’m good at.”  


“If you already knew that then why did you come?”  


“Because I have two questions and you’re the only ghost I can think of who can answer them.”

“Okay,” Louie said, trying to keep his voice from wavering.

“Did you arrange for Lawrence Orion to be buried in a marked grave?”  


“What?” Louie asked in confusion. “Miss he was an impoverished harlot who fancied men and then killed himself. I know the living world had changed a great deal since I died, but back then folks like him didn’t get graves.”  


Lydia nodded. “That’s what I thought. Okay, final question: what day did he die? Don’t tell me you don’t remember, I can see in your eyes that you do.”  


Louie clenched and unclenched his fists nervously, he hadn’t felt this uneasy around another soul since he’d been alive. “June 13th, 1750.”  


“Thank you, Louie Canis. One last thing before I go.” She took another step towards him until she was right under his nose. She was more than a foot shorter than him and still he felt dwarfed by her presence. As Shakespeare said; _though she be but little, she is fierce._ He fought the urge to back away from her, not wanting to show fear before such a small woman. 

“Whenever you close your eyes from here on out, whenever you dream, you’ll see my face and you’ll remember what you did. You’ll remember that your cowardice killed Lawrence Orion.”

“That isn’t fair!” Louis shouted down at her, infuriated by her unwavering calm. “You don’t understand how it was back then for people like us.”  


“You’re right. I don’t. But I know what it is to be afraid of love, so why bother getting his hopes up if you always planned to abandon him. Because you _did_ always plan to, don’t deny it, I can see it.”

“How?” He whispered. “How do you know all these things?”  


“I know what I need to know.”

And then as quickly as she’d darkened his doorway, the small goth was gone.

* * *

Juno knew it was Beetlejuice banging on her door. She’d heard his angry fists so many times over the centuries that she’d memorized it.

“Come in, Beetle,” she rasped.

The ghoul materialized in her office. _Showoff,_ she thought.

“Hey there, Junebug,” he drawled, waltzing over to her desk. “Got a request for ya?”  


“I’m not making that girl marry you.”  


“Jeez, Junie, that ain’t it.”  


Juno looked up at him and exhaled smoke directly into his face. He didn’t flinch. “You mean to tell me that Lydia Deetz girl is still with you?” Beetlejuice nodded proudly. Juno was shocked. She could tell the girl was odd, macabre, extremely self-sabotaging based on her past suicide attempts, but to be absurd enough to continue to have a romantic relationship with a murderous demon was the wildest behavior she’d seen from a mortal since Edgar Allan Poe. 

“Lydia loves me, Junebug, and I love her. Which is why I’m asking to get her haunting location transferred.”  


“Excuse me?” Juno said in exasperation. She couldn’t believe the gall this demon still had, even after all these years. 

“Oh don’t look at me like that. I know it can be done.”

“Yes, for centuries-old spirits, not a girl who died last year.”  


“Well, make an exception then.”  


“I will do no such thing, _demon,_ now get out of my office.”  


“She can go wherever she wants in the mortal world anyway,” Beetlejuice said, planting his hands flat on Juno’s desk and leaning forward. “At least that’s the theory.”

Juno ashed her cigarette onto Beetlejuice’s hand, again he didn’t even flinch. “What’re you talking about?”

Beetlejuice smirked. “You didn’t know? My baby’s a witch. And a strong one too. She’s got mirror magic. Can travel anywhere in the living world and The Netherworld.”  
Juno ground her teeth together. She did _not_ know that. “Be that as it may,” she said, her voice morphing into a growl. “She wouldn’t be able to haunt a place outside of her haunting limitations longer than a few hours without fading.”  


“Oh believe me, Junebug, I know that.” He _did_ not know that for sure. He had suspected it, but had kept his worries from Lydia. “That’s why I want a different location for us.”

“ _Us?”  
_

“As far as she goes is as far as I go.”  


Juno finished her cigarette, stubbed it out and folded her hands in front of her. She stared angrily at the demon for several moments before speaking. “If I do this, Beetle, I don’t want to see you in my office for another century. Got it?”

“Got it.”  


“Alright then,” she said opening a drawer and taking out some paperwork, where do you want to go?”


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "...Maybe sadness isn’t something you fix, or try to exorcize, but rather something you try to live with; something you embrace. Maybe a monstrous being was the only person who understood her."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) new chapter on Monday. Hope everyone has a safe weekend, please wear your masks.

Charles Deetz was woken up one night by an intense drop in temperature in the room. Delia was sleeping peacefully beside him as he sat up, startled, but not exactly sure why. And then he saw his dead wife standing at the foot of his bed. If Emily had come to haunt him right after she died (which wouldn’t have been possible since he’d left New York), he wouldn’t have been able to see her and he most likely wouldn’t have believed Lydia when she would have said she could. But Charles had been exposed to the strange and unusual the summer he moved his family into the Maitlands’ house. The summer his daughter summoned the demon that would become her lover. So as a young Emily Deetzstood before him in a white dress and grey cardigan, he could see her. Every beautiful inch. He felt the breath leave his throat and tears fill his eyes.

“Emily?” he whispered.

His late wife gave him one of her soothing smiles. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed them. He adored Delia’s smile, but the spread of lips and teeth never quite looked as good on anyone as they did on Emily Deetz.

“Hello, Charles,” she said. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”  


Charles quietly got out of bed and moved to stand before his wife. He reached out a tentative hand and sure enough he could touch her. She was corporeal. She was solid. She was _real._ “How?” He whispered. “Why didn’t you come sooner?”  


“I can only haunt the city in which I died. You left New York. I couldn’t follow.”  


Her words gutted him. “Emily…I’m sorry. If I’d known—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. How on earth could you have known? Not everyone keeps company with as many ghosts as our daughter. But let’s not discuss this here.” She nodded towards a sleeping Delia and then vanished. Charles, somewhat dazed, stumbled out of his room and down the hall to his office in the New York City apartment in which he and Delia had lived since the night Lydia was stabbed and then hit her head on Lawrence Orion’s grave and fell into a coma of which she had still not yet awoken.

Emily was sitting on Charles’ s small, tweed sofa, a glass of rosé in her hand. She sipped it. He marveled that a ghost could do such a thing as drink wine; he’d never seen the Maitlands eat or drink (he’d honestly never seen them do much of anything seeing as the Deetzs and Maitlands didn’t mix well). 

“Emily, Lydia…she isn’t well.”  


“I know,” Emily said, swishing her wine around in the glass before taking another sip. “But at least she’s not dead. Which is a relief.”  


“Why would she be dead?”  


“Because she’s in The Netherworld.” Emily didn’t bother to try and explain to Charles that Lydia was actually in the in between, the void between the living and the dead; he could barely grasp the concept of ghosts even after having lived amongst them for a decade. 

“The what?”

“The land of the dead.”

“Is that where you are?”  


“No, darling I’m here with you.” His dead wife smirked at him and Charles felt a small smile grace his face. Gods how he had missed her.

“But yes, I reside in The Netherworld now. I have a cottage and I get to look this young for all of eternity. I make tea. I spend time alone. It’s nice. I’m happy, Charles so please don’t worry about me.”  


“Have you seen Lydia?” He asked, his voice desperate.

Emily nodded and sipped more wine. “Yes. And I’ve seen the Maitlands and I’ve seen Beetlejuice.”  


“You…what?” Charles felt his throat go dry.

“I take it you don’t know that he never left?”

Charles opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t find the words. His dead wife gave him a sad smile. “Yes,” she continued. “It would seem our daughter fell in love with him, and somehow—despite the fact that demons are soulless creatures who in theory cannot experience human emotion—he fell in love with her right back. He came to see me the summer she turned eighteen. And she was with him the night she nearly died.”

“Gods, Emily, did he attack her? Did he try to kill her?”

“I’m not sure,” Emily said. She truly _wasn’t_ sure. She knew what Lydia and the Maitlands believed, but she had no idea what Beetlejuice’s side of the story was, and she knew that the human mind could tell itself the most fantastic tales in order to hide a truth too painful to know. “But she’s with him now. She chose to be.”  


“Why on earth would she do that.”

Emily finished her wine and then the glass vanished. Charles’s eyes widened, he’d never known his wife or daughter was a witch and Emily wasn’t about to tell him. She’d let him think all ghosts had such abilities. “Because, darling, as I said—she loves him. Quite madly, too.”

“How is that possible! He’s a monster!”

“I think that’s why she loves him, Charles,” a third voice said. Both Charles and Emily looked to see Delia standing in the doorway, wrapped in a pink silk robe, her red hair tied up in a matching silk scarf. “Hello,” she said, nodding at the ghost she could also see thanks to the summer so many years ago. “I take it your Charles’s wife.”  


“No, dear,” Emily said with a kind smile. “You are.”  


“I just meant—”

“I know what you meant, Delia,” Emily said. “But when you two finish your lives, I’m confident you’ll find each other in the afterlife.” Charles opened his mouth to speak again, not sure what he could even say or who he would be trying to defend by doing so, but his dead wifespoke again to spare him. “It’s alright, darling. We were the perfect loves for one another when we were young. But we grew out of each other. Delia is the perfect love for you now, and I suspect for forever. That’s alright. It’s how things are. I didn’t come to fuss about all that. I came to ask you where Lydia is.”  


“In the hospital. She’s in a coma, has been for over a year.” Charles turned back to his living wife. “What did you mean by that? She loves him _because_ he’s a monster?”  


“Charles,” Delia said gently, “we never understood Lydia. She was alone and sad and we tried to fix it, but maybe…” Delia took a deep breath, “maybe we were wrong. Maybe sadness isn’t something you fix, or try to exorcize, but rather something you try to live with; something you embrace. Maybe a monstrous being was the only person who understood her.”

“Lydia isn’t a monster because she’s sad.”

“And Beetlejuice isn’t bad because he’s a monster.”  


“He drove us from our home!”

“Because Lydia asked him too.”  


“I can’t believe you’re defending him!”

“Charles, if what Emily says is true, Lydia kept up a romantic relationship with him for months under our roof and we had no idea. She was with him the night she nearly died. She’s with him now. I’m not saying he’s a good person, or that I understand how in the world she could love him, but she does. We want Lydia back and the only person who knows where she is, is Emily.” Delia walked past her husband over to the sofa to sit next to his ghostly former wife, doing her best not to feel intimidated. “What do we do?” She asked. “How do we wake her up?”

“First,” Emily said, “we need to tell her that she’s alive. She’s believed herself to be dead all this time. The Maitlands think she’s dead, even Beetlejuice believes she’s dead. If her soul learns it still has a breathing body to return to, then it shouldn’t be too hard. I just need you to show me where the hospital is, take me to her. Then I can go find her in The Netherworld and lead her back to herself.”  


“What if,” Delia said softly, almost fearfully, “she doesn’t want to wake up?”

“Delia,” Charles said, horrified. But Emily Deetz just reached out and placed an icy hand over Delia Deetz’s warm one. “Then we let her go.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well,” Emily said, “you can leave, right now. Go wherever it is you two were planning to go to, and be happy together. Or, you can wake up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new chapter wednesday :) thank you so much for all the kudos and comments and support. means the world to me <3

Beetlejuice returned to the coffin to find Lydia curled up on the couch, fast asleep. He smiled. He snapped his fingers and a mug of coffin coffee appeared in his hands. He walked over and kneeled in front of her. He gently stroked her hair. “Babe,” he said softly. Lydia opened her eyes to see the beautiful stormy ones of her demon gazing down at her. She smiled. Then she spied the coffee in his hand and held out her own. He chuckled and handed it to her as she sat up. “I’ve got some exciting news,” he said as she sipped her drink. 

She raised an eyebrow. “We’re moving.”  


She smirked as she lowered the coffee mug. “Oh, are we?”

“Yes. I went and spoke to Juno today. I got you a haunting relocation.”

“A what?”

“They’re usually for ghosts that have been dead for centuries but I pulled a few strings and got you one.” He moved to sit next to her on the couch. “I don’t want to keep you cooped up here in a coffin for all of eternity, and I can’t stay in The Netherworld, and we could go back to the haunted house, but soon some other family will move in there and I figured you wouldn’t want to haunt some strangers. We could go to the graveyard but I thought that might make you lonely, and I didn’t know of anywhere else in the state you’d want to go.”

“The state? I thought you could only haunt where you died?”

“Some folks only get a certain amount of space. I had just assumed you only got the cemetery, but Junebug said you were good enough in your life to get all of Connecticut.”

“But…what about the mirrors?”

“Yeah, she mentioned that too. Your spirit would fade if you haunted somewhere outside of your designated location for more than a few hours.”  


Lydia didn’t want to know what ‘fading’ entailed. She also wondered why if she got a whole state the Maitlands only got a house. But she figured Beetlejuice didn't have the answer to that (you and I both know he didn’t, not yet anyway). 

“So, where have I been relocated to?”  


The demon grinned. “Hawaii.”

* * *

Lydia, Beetlejuice and Emily appeared in a hospital hallway. It turned out that since Lydia was still very much alive her spirit could travel anywhere her physical body could if it had been awake. She had never been restricted to the coffin, the graveyard, the house, or even the gods damn state of Connecticut. She realized this as they materialized in the sterile space and felt a lurch in her stomach, not wanting to think about how she’d spent months and months in a windowless box beneath the ground, totally unaware that she could’ve returned to her life at any moment. Granted it had only felt like a few weeks to her, but still.

Beetlejuice realized this as well as he saw Lydia standing beside him easily, not having needed a mirror to travel outside of where he had thought she’d died. He felt the guilt like an anchor around his neck. 

Lydia looked at her mother who nodded to a room down the hall. Number 017. Seventeen, the age she’d been when her and Beetlejuice first met. The age she had been when her entire life morphed into some kind of strange, gothic romance. The year that she wouldn’t trade for the world. All those times Beetlejuice had hurt her paled in comparison to the times he’d been her everything.

She swallowed a lump in her throat and slowly walked towards the door; Emily and Beetlejuice followed behind her. When Lydia entered the room her legs almost gave out from the sight before her. It was _her._ Her skin was grey and sallow, she was hooked up to tube and wires. The incessant beeping of machines flooded the room in a cacophony of oppressive sound. She gasped and felt tears begin to rush down her face as she walked over to her physical self, her vision so blurry from tears that she felt like she was looking at the world through beer goggles. All the while, her mother and her demon stood quietly in the doorway, watching the scene with their own unique forms of heartbreak.

Lydia stood over her body, tears dripping onto the floor, but leaving no trace, she was ghost enough to still be invisible to the living world. She looked back at Emily and Beetlejuice. “What do I do?” She whispered.

“Well,” Emily said, “you can leave, right now. Go wherever it is you two were planning to go to, and be happy together. Or, you can wake up.”  


Beetlejuice felt his entire body tense at Emily Deetz’s words.

“Wake up?” Lydia repeated, feeling dumbfounded by how simple those two words were.

Her mother smiled at her and nodded. “You couldn’t before because your soul and mind had no idea they were still alive—that _you_ were still alive. But you are. So if you want to, you can decide to wake up.”

“Why…wouldn’t I want to?” Lydia said softly, looking at her body and then back at her mother, but her eyes couldn’t help but float past Emily’s until they landed on Beetlejuice. She could see the agony in his gaze.

“I think you know why,” Emily said.

And then Beetlejuice vanished. Lydia practically choked on a sob as she ran past her mother and out into the hallway where Beetlejuice was storming away. The living world _could_ see _him._ Some gasped, or looked on in confusion as he walked by but most were too consumed with their own worry and agony to pay him any mind. And even though he appeared human enough, his demonic energy created a darkness around him that was distinctly _inhumane_ and unsettling. Lydia however was invisible to almost everyone there. 

She caught up to Beetlejuice and reached out and grabbed ahold of his jacket sleeve to stop him. “Beetlejuice,” she practically sobbed. “Wait.” The ghoul stopped but didn’t turn around. Lydia’s fingers were still gripping the fabric of his coat. “Please,” she whispered. “Nothing has to change.”  


“Everything has to change, and you know that,” he said, his voice an agonizing growl.

Lydia closed her eyes and let her tears fall, her hand still holding onto his jacket. Finally she let go and moved to stand in front of him. He had his head bowed to avoid her gaze, but she reached her arms up and cupped his face in her hands, dipping her head down to meet his.

“I’ve never said it enough,” she started, “but you have to know by now how much I love you.”

“You deserve better, Lydia.”  


She dug her nails in gently to his ghostly skin. “I don’t care.”

He finally dragged his eyes up to meet hers and he felt his dead heart break all over again. He could see it now, the living light in her eyes, it was only a soft glow, but it was there all the same. He couldn’t believe that all this time he hadn’t noticed how alive she was.

“Beetlejuice,” she said, terrified of what she was about to ask, “do I remember that night correctly?” He didn’t answer. She inhaled. “Please,” she said, her voice a sharp, painful hiss. 

“Please tell me. Do I remember the night I almost died correctly?”  


“No,” he said, his voice so soft the sound was almost lost in the noise of the hospital hallway. “No, baby, you don’t.”  


“You didn’t kill me, did you?”

He shook his head.

“Then why is that what I remember?”

“I don’t know,” he said sorrowfully, and he meant it. “I think it made it easier for you. They say…” this time he was the one to take a deep (unnecessary) breath. “They say most suicide victims wish they hadn’t done it the second they realize they have.”  


“What?” Lydia said, dropping her hands and stepping back. She looked down at her chest, her stab wound was still there.

“What you told the Maitlands is true,” he said. “You asked me to kill you.”

Lydia looked back up at her demon and then the memory came back to her. It crashed into her like a wave, knocking her down, drowning her deep.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He should’ve never listened to her. He should’ve insisted she live. But it was too late now. Horrible and irrevocably too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a LOT is revealed in this chapter. I hope you enjoy :) new chapter friday!

It was raining the night Lydia thought Beetlejuice killed her. They were in the graveyard yelling at each other as they often did. Far more times than have been catalogued in this story. “You are so fucking stupid!” Lydia screamed at him.  


Beetlejuice’s eyes glowed with fury. “ _Excuse me_?”

She daringly took a step toward him. “I have loved you ever since the night I met you.” She took another step closer. “I have loved you my whole life. I loved you before I knew you.” She took another step closer and another until they were face to face. He could see her tears of rage and heartbreak openly cascading down her cheeks. “It’s always been you. I realized that the day I left. That there was no one else. It would be you or nothing.” 

And that’s when the Lydia in the hospital, collapsed on the hallway floor in her demon lover’s arms, finally remembered what really happened. 

* * *

Before Emily Deetz fond the lovers in the graveyard about to depart for a different life (or afterlife) together, they were still in Beetlejuice’s coffin; still ignorant to the truth of the situation. 

“What are we going to do in Hawaii?”  


Beetlejuice shrugged, sitting down next to Lydia on the couch. “Whatever we want. Read book. Sip mai tais. You can take your pictures.”  


“What will you do?”

“Be with you.”

Lydia chewed her lip and contemplated for a moment. Beetlejuice studied her serious expression; it made him nervous.

“What?” He asked.

“I can’t be your whole life.”

“Babe, we’re dead. We don’t have a life.”  


Lydia rolled her eyes and sighed. “You know what I mean. I try not to ask you too many questions about when you were alive because I can see how hard it is for you to talk about, but I’ve always wondered, what you did while you were alive.”

“You know what I did,” he said gruffly.

Lydia shook her head. “No. I mean, I read, I take photos. What did you _do?_ You said you didn’t read much until me, so what did you do then?”

“I didn’t have a lot of free time, babe.”  


“Beetlejuice,” she said firmly, drawing his gaze back to her. “Please.”  


He relented. He knew he never really could say no to her. “I used to write.”  


Lydia’s eyes lit up at this. “What did you write?”

“Lydia,” he said lowly, his voice full of obvious agony. “Please. Stop.”

Lydia’s eyes dimmed and her smile faded away. She reached out and took one of his hands in hers. She began tracing patters across it with the tip of her fingers. Beetlejuice closed his eyes and sighed, leaning his head back against the sofa and giving in to the sweet sensation of Lydia’s touch. He wanted her to say that she loved him, but he knew those words were rare. She rarely openly adored him, and it crushed him bit by bit each time he longed for the verbal affection he knew she’d never give. 

He opened his eyes and glanced back over at her. She looked up from where her eyes had been cast down towards his palm. “What?” She asked softly.

He reached out and pushed a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “I used to regret dying the way I did. And I used to regret selling my soul.”

“And now?”

He smiled. “Every choice I made lead me here—to you.” Lydia smiled back. “Do you ever wish you’d jumped?” He asked, his voice softer, unsure. She didn’t answer at first. He gripped one of her hands in his. “Do you ever regret being with me?”  
She shook her head adamantly. “I’ll never regret you.”

He reached out and pulled her into his lap, pulling her mouth down to his in a searing kiss. Lydia began to instinctively grind against him as his hands trailed down her back to dig into the soft skin around her hips. She tilted her head back and gasped as he bit into her neck, leaving a beautiful bruise.

“I want to say goodbye,” she panted out in-between thrusts.

Beetlejuice stopped, pulled back a bit and looked at her. 

“To the haunted house,” she explained, looking down at him. “I want to say goodbye to my old home before going to my new one.”  


Beetlejuice didn’t really understand, he had no sentimental connections to any of the places from his life, but he knew Lydia did, and if this is what it took to get her to run away to Hawaii with him, then he would do it gladly. 

“Alright,” he said, bucking his hips underneath her, causing her to crash forward into him, laughing a bit as she did. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Lydia still lay on the hospital hallway floor in the demon’s arms as the memory of how she _didn’t_ die consumed her.

“You never said it,” he growled. “That you loved me.”

“I didn’t think I needed to.”

Beetlejuice studied Lydia. She was stunning. She was sad and rain soaked and furious and passionate and wonderful. He knew he would be terrified of losing her for as long as he existed, but in that moment, standing amongst the dead, a storm raging around them, he was finally able to dredge up a piece of Lawrence Orion that had been missing those past ten years—understanding. He understood then that if he fought this hard to make her stay, he would lose her forever. The nearly dead Lydia he would come to know was right, Louie Canis was the reason he didn’t trust her to come back. But Lydia was magnificent where Louie was awful. She was kind where Louie was selfish. And she was brave where Louie was an abominable coward. 

As he looked into his love’s eyes, he could finally see the real reason she kept running away. She wasn’t afraid of him, she was afraid of living. She always had been. She was terrified that every new tomorrow would be the one she couldn’t endure. But she also knew what became of suicide victims. The proof was standing right in front of her. His final realization came to him then; she wasn’t actually this angry at him, she was goading him.

“Lydia,” he said, his voice coated in agony. “Tell me why you’re really running away.”  


Lydia opened her mouth to speak but instead choked on a sob and collapsed to the ground. Beetlejuice kneeled before her, he wanted to touch her but knew better. He let her sob into the wet grass until she was able to bring her gaze back up to meet his. “It’s too hard,” she whispered against the rain.

He reached out and pressed his palm against her cheek, slick from rain and tears. “I understand.” And he did. No one understood a single thing about Lydia Deetz better than the demon before her.

“If I do it myself…” her voice trailed off into the night, the words too agonizing for even her to speak aloud.

Beetlejuice nodded. “I know.”  


Her icy eyes bore into his stormy ones. “Help me,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes and dropped his hand away. The entire time he’d known her, he’d fought to keep her safe and alive, and now she was asking him to kill her. He knew in the past she hadn’t meant it, the night they met it had been evident to him, even then—as a stranger—that she wanted someone to stop her. But now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe the rain was blurring the whole picture, or maybe Lydia Deetz truly wanted to die.

“Babe…”

“If you don’t do it then I’ll find someone who will. I can’t keep doing this anymore. Everyday is agony. I feel alone and crazy all of the time.”

He wanted to tell her she could’ve come back to him sooner, that he would’ve taken care of her. But he knew it was too late, they couldn’t undo the past ten years. He had already told her that her fears of his anger towards her were fabricated by her own anxiety; reminding her of that again now would only make her feel even worse. He had to accept that there was no erasing the agony inside of this girl he loved. 

“Are you sure?” He asked. She nodded. “Okay, baby. Stand up.” The two stood together and a dagger appeared in Beetlejuice’s hand. “I’ll do it quick,” he promised. “It won’t hurt.”  


Lydia nodded, keeping her eyes locked on his, and then she felt the burning, piercing, agonizing force of the blade in her chest and she screamed. Beetlejuice realized a second too late what a grave mistake he’d made. He should’ve never listened to her. He should’ve insisted she live. But it was too late now. Horrible and irrevocably too late. 

Without thinking, he yanked the dagger free from her chest. “Lydia!” He cried out, his hands covered in her blood. He reached out for her but in a panicked daze she took a step backward. She stumbled, tripped and fell. He reached for her again and again he was too late. She fell back, back, back until the demon heard the sickening sound of her skull cracking against the stone surface of his tombstone. He cried out again as Lydia Deetz’s body tumbled to the grass, her head and heart painting it red.

He held onto her for so long. Rocking her limp body back and forth. He’d died so long ago it that didn’t occur to him to check for a pulse, and her heartbeat had dulled so much that he could no longer hear it. Her skin was cold, her eyes were closed. He felt as though she _was_ dead. He truly _believed_ she was dead. And then he saw the ambulance coming up the hill. He hadn’t been lying when he told her he didn’t really understand them. So he vanished—assuming they’d come to remove her body to prepare for burial—and appeared outside the waiting room door. She appeared a moment after him. She met his gaze for a moment and then she fainted. He scooped her up off the floor and carried her inside, placing her down in the chair, then went to fetch her paperwork and a cup of coffee for when she woke up.

When she did and he realized how out of it she was, that she believed he’d killed her, he was heartbroken. But he also knew he couldn’t tell her what had really happened. She would either not believe him or go mad from the truth. So he went along with the false memory her mind had crafted for her. He let her think he’d murdered her. He let her think he’d said all those awful things to her. He spent weeks watching in agony as she fell into a deep depression from which he couldn’t rescue her. And when she told him she’d told the Maitlands she’d asked him to kill her, he had a shred of hope that she’d finally remember.

And then Emily Deetz told them both the entire truth.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How did you know?” He asked, looking back up at the ghostly mother.  
>  “Because I knew how much you loved my daughter. A demon strong enough to learn to love would not be weak enough to kill that which taught him how to feel again in the first place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone has a fun and safe weekend! PLEASE wear your masks. My American readers, please make sure you're registered to vote. Once again I can never thank you all enough for the joy your readership has brought me. I hope you enjoy this chapter (I apologize, it's a short one). New chapter on Monday :)

“That’s what I suspected,” Emily said.

Beetlejuice looked up at Emily from where he was on the floor, holding a hysterical Lydia. The full memory of the night she almost died had run its course in her mind. She understood the truth and the agony of the lie her head had told her.

“I regretted it as soon as I did it,” he told Emily. “She was just…she was so sad.”  


“I understand,” Emily said.

“She—” Beetlejuice felt like he was going to cry, and he almost wished he could, just so that he could let his own sorrow out the way Lydia still could. He looked back down at Lydia, her hysterics had subsided to soft sobs, her face buried into his jacket. “She’d tried before. Twice.”  


Emily didn’t say anything, just nodded. 

“How did you know?” He asked, looking back up at the ghostly mother.

“Because I knew how much you loved my daughter. A demon strong enough to learn to love would not be weak enough to kill that which taught him how to feel again in the first place.”  


Beetlejuice nodded, unsure of what to say back.

“I’m impressed though,” Emily continued. 

“By what?”  


“That you love her so much as to let her think you murdered her.”  


He looked back at Lydia. “It would’ve broken her to know the truth. And besides, I did try and kill her.”

“You tried to save her.”  


“I killed myself,” he said softly, still gazing down at Lydia.

Emily Deetz was beside him then, a gentle hand on his shoulder, he looked over at her—shocked by the tender show of affection. “I know,” she said kindly. “And that’s okay. Everything you ever did, alive and dead, brought you onto my daughter’s roof that night. Everything you did lead you to Lydia. Would you really rather have it any other way?”  


Beetlejuice shook his head sadly. “No,” he said softly. “She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Her…” he struggled to speak the words, they were raw and heartbreaking, 

“Her loving me, is the best part of me.”  


“And she didn’t fall in love with whoever you were when you were alive. That man is buried in a cemetery outside of an empty house. She fell in love with _you.”  
_

“I know,” he said. “But I’ve complicated her entire life for a decade now. There are a lot of bad things that wouldn’t have happened to her if I hadn’t been around. There are a lot of bad things I did to her.”

“That’s not surprising,” Emily said. “So what will you do now?”  


He looked down at Lydia one last time. “I’ll go,” he said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’ll let her live her life.”

And just like that, Emily Deetz vanished and Lydia Deetz finally awoke from her episode. She opened her tear-stained eyes and looked up at Beetlejuice. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t apologize,” he said firmly, pulling them both back up to stand. “I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should’ve protected you from yourself.”  


“You let me think you killed me.”  


“It would’ve hurt you too much to know the truth.”

“But what if I’d never remembered?”  


He shrugged. 

She shook her head. “You think you’re so wicked. But you’re not. You’re better than so many living people. I don’t know Lawrence Orion. I don’t know if he was good like you say he was. I only know Beetlejuice. And he’s a good man.”

Beetlejuice kissed her. A searing, ferocious kiss and she kissed him back. The two drowned in each other, letting their mouths move together in a perfect dance. When they finally broke apart they were both gasping even though only one of them needed air. Beetlejuice held her face in his hands and rested his forehead against hers.

“Go,” he whispered. “Go, my love. Live your life.”  


And then he was gone.

* * *

“Charles!” Delia screamed. Charles came rushing into the kitchen where Delia was standing, phone to her ear, a shocked look on her face. “What is it?” He asked, nervously. 

“It’s Lydia,” Delia said. “She’s awake.”


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia couldn’t help but smile. “That’s awesome. What grade?”
> 
> “Eighth! Right now we’re reading Frankenstein.”
> 
> “Yeah?” Skye nodded. “That’s my favorite book.”
> 
> “Really?” Skye asked excitedly.
> 
> Lydia took a big gulp of her second rum and coke and nodded. “Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter today, longer one coming Wednesday!
> 
> If you're an American reader please sign this petition to help save the USPS! https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/save-the-us-postal-service?source=direct_link&

A year later and a twenty-nine year old Lydia walked out of the pouring rain and into a dive bar in Brooklyn. She wandered over to the bar and ordered a rum and coke. As she began to sip her drink slowly, her hair dripping onto the bar top, the tall blonde girl next to her turned to take in the goth’s appearance. “Lydia?” The blonde asked tentatively.

Lydia looked over at the girl and took a moment to register where she’d seen her face before. Where _had_ she seen her? Then it hit her. In a dorm hallway, arms full of girl scout cookies. “Skye?”

Skye grinned and nodded. “I knew it was you!” She lunged forward and wrapped Lydia up in a hug despite the fact that Lydia was soaking wet. Lydia in return awkwardly wrapped her arms around the first girl she had ever kissed (there had been many more girls since then). When Skye pulled back she was still beaming at Lydia. She was still sunny everywhere that Lydia was gloomy, grey skies.

“How have you been?”

Lydia shrugged. “Well, I was in a coma for a year so that sucked. Thought I was dead the whole time so that sucked even more.”  


Skye remembered the strange harshness of the goth’s words from all those years ago. Still—hearing them again was jarring. 

“You died?”  


“Almost,” Lydia said, downing the rest of her drink. “Fell and hit my head on a grave.”  


Skye honestly couldn’t tell if Lydia was kidding or not. 

“What do you mean you thought you were dead?”

Lydia raised and eyebrow at Skye, wondering if the girl remembered the one night they’d spent together. Maybe the experience was so absurdly traumatic she’d convinced herself it had all been a drunken dream. 

Instead of answering her Lydia ordered two more drinks and slid one over to Skye. “So what do you do now that you’re all grown up?” Lydia tried to forget the fact that Skye had only been sixteen the first time they kissed, and then tried to forget that she herself had only been seventeen when she had sex with a 300 year old demon. 

“I’m an English teacher,” Skye said proudly. 

Lydia couldn’t help but smile. “That’s awesome. What grade?”  


“Eighth! Right now we’re reading _Frankenstein_.”

“Yeah?” Skye nodded. “That’s my favorite book.”

“Really?” Skye asked excitedly.

Lydia took a big gulp of her second rum and coke and nodded. “Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”

Skye grinned. “It’s my favorite book, too. It’s brilliant.”  


Lydia smiled back and raised her glass in the air. “To Mary Shelley, Mistress of the Macabre.”

Skye kept beaming incessantly at Lydia. She raised her glass and clinked it with hers. “To Shelley,” she said.

The two of them finished their drinks and then Lydia said. “Would you like to come home with me?” And of course Skye smiled and nodded _yes._

* * *

In the year 1749 Lawrence Orion walked into Madame Numquam’s ‘tavern’ with nothing but the clothes on his back, soaked from the rainstorm raging outside. He wandered up to the bar and put down a few coins on the counter. A tall, dark and alluring young man behind the counter eyed him up and down. “What can I do ya for, traveler?”  
“What do you recommend for forgetting?” Lawrence asked.

The bartended gave him a wry smile. “Rough night?”

“Rough life.”  


The man nodded and poured Lawrence a beer and then pushed his coins back across the counter to him. Lawrence wanted to refuse him but was in no position to do so. He pocketed his coins and drank half his beer in one go. 

“Are you from around here?”  


“Close enough.” Lawrence had lived on the outskirts of town. 

“Are you in need of work?”  


“I don’t know much about being a barkeep.”  


“Madame isn’t looking for a barkeep,” the man said.

Lawrence waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. Lawrence raised his eyebrows to signal for the man to continue. The man looked around the tavern then leaned in towards  Lawrence and whispered, “can you keep a secret?”  


“Better than anyone,” Lawrence said.

“Could I call you Molly?”

It only took Lawrence a moment to realize what the man meant. “You’d be half right if you did,” he said. He still found beauty and joy in the embrace of a woman, but he could also easily see his body tangled around the barkeep’s in a beautiful mess. 

“We just lost a Molly. Has she returned in you?”  


“Would Molly be well paid?”  


“Paid more than what little’s in your pocket.”  


Lawrence nodded and then finished the rest of his beer. “I’m Lawrence.”

The man smiled. “Louie.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I used to think you were something truly remarkable.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new chapter Friday!

Lydia woke up screaming. Another night terror. They had become more frequent ever since she’d woken up from her coma a year ago. She groaned as she sat up, wiping some of the sweat from her face. She rolled out of bed, pulled a large cardigan on over her thin black nightgown and shuffled over to her desk. She pulled open the top drawer and took out a pack of cigarettes, a habit she’d picked up since the coma. She’d kept promising herself she would quit. 

She walked over to her window and opened it, climbing out onto the fire escape. The January night-air was sharp and chilling but she drank it in. She sat down on the icy steps—barefoot. She lit her cigarette and watched as the exhaled smoke mixed in with her clouds of winter breath. When she finished she stubbed her cigarette out and guiltily dropped it over the edge of the railing, sending it plummeting to the street below. She climbed back into her room and shut the window; it had begun to snow. 

She sensed in that moment that she was no longer alone in her apartment. She crept slowly towards her bedroom door and threw it open to see a large, looming figure before her. She opened her mouth to scream but a familiar icy hand clamped down over her. As the moonlight began to drip across the room, illuminating the creature’s face, she sighed in relief. 

“Hey, babe,” Beetlejuice said, lowering his hand.

“Hi,” she said quietly. 

The two stood before each other awkwardly.

“How long has it been?” He asked.

“A year.”  


Beetlejuice gritted his teeth. He wondered if he’d ever get better at measuring the time between worlds. _I should get a watch,_ he thought.

Lydia studied him, waiting for him to say something else; to give her some kind of explanation as to why he’d abandoned her when she’d needed him the most, but the ghoul remained silent. So she sighed in frustration and retreated back to her bed, shrugged off her cardigan and crawled back under the covers. Beetlejuice watched intently as she rolled away from him. 

“Babe.”  


“What’d you want?” She mumbled into her pillow. 

He materialized next to her on the bed. She glared at him and rolled over again.

“To see you, obviously.”  


“You’ve had plenty of time to do that,” she grumbled. “Why now?”  


“Why not?”  


Infuriated, Lydia sat up in bed and faced him, her fiery eyes boring into his. “Why not a year ago when I woke up from a fucking coma?”

“You needed your space.”  


“No,” she said firmly. “I needed _you.”_ Seething now, she hopped out of bed, yanking her cardigan back on and began pacing the room, trying to quell her anger and failing miserably. 

“You nearly ruined our entire relationship by freaking out every time I left, then when I need you the most, _you_ leave _me._ And now you sneak into my room in the middle of the night because you ‘want to see me?’ Are you serious, Beetlejuice?” The demon said nothing. Lydia continued. “I have a life now. A therapist, anti-depressants, a job I enjoy and—” her voice caught in her throat. Beetlejuice nodded for her to go on. “I have a girlfriend.”

Beetlejuice didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t unusual for Lydia to render him speechless but it was still agonizing every time it happened.

“Do you love her?” He asked.

Lydia stopped her pacing to look at him. To look at him; stormy green eyes, his sharp jaw, his stony lips. She’d spent so many nights wishing for him. So many times she’d almost said his name. Almost climbed through her mirror. But she was sick of being the one fighting to make them work. She wanted him to want her as much as he had always claimed he did. She had wanted his face to be the first thing she saw when she woke up in the hospital bed. She wanted him to be the one in bed with her every night. She wanted him to be brave. 

There had been a time when she idolized him. A time when she hated him, and a time when she feared him. Now? Now she pitied him. She saw all the fear of the world in his eyes.

“You’re such a coward,” she said.

Beetlejuice stiffened at the word. “Lydia—”

“I mean it. I loved you all along. You could’ve had me all along. You _did_ have me. I gave you all of me, blindly. I was willing to follow you to the ends of the earth. I let myself keep loving you even when I believed you’d murdered me. I loved you when reason told me not to—when _sanity_ told me not to. But you’re still just the same scared little man you were when you were alive.”

Beetlejuice materialized in front of her again, furious flames in his eyes. “How _dare_ you?”  


“How dare you!” She shouted, shoving him away. “I gave up everything for you time and time again. And you left me! And now you’re back and expect me to do what? Drop everything and run away with you? Forgive you _again?”_ She waited for him to answer, but he didn’t. She laughed. “I used to think you were something truly remarkable.”  
Beetlejuice clenched his fists and tried to remain calm (as calm as a furious demon can be). “You think Lawrence Orion was a coward? Why? Because I killed myself? You tried to kill yourself, _three_ times.”

“You tried to kill yourself before that final time.”  


Beetlejuice’s eyes widened and Lydia immediately realized her mistake. 

“How do you know that?” Lydia said nothing, just took a small step back. Beetlejuice took two steps forward. “Lydia, how do you know that?”

“Louie told me,” she said softly.

Beetlejuice’s demonic anger finally boiled over, he reached out a hand and wrapped it around her throat, shoving her back into the wall. She gasped softly. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to seeing the purely soulless side of him. 

“When did you talk to him? _How_ did you talk to him?”

Lydia said nothing. He squeezed around her throat and she let out an upset squeak, ashamed of how pathetic the sound was.

“I got his address in The Netherworld from Jeanie. I went to see him because I had questions…”  


“ _What questions?”_ He growled.

She clawed at his hand around her throat and he finally released her. She gasped for air as she shoved him away.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“Of course it does.”

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t. You don’t get to make this about you.”

“You went and spoke to my ex—” he struggled to say the word _lover;_ it got caught in his throat, choking him. “You went and spoke to him without my permission.”  


“Newsflash,” she said. “You don’t own me. I don’t need your permission to do anything. Especially not now. You had your chance, Beetlejuice. You had a hundred chances and you blew all of them. I have a life now and you’re not a part of it. So just…” she inhaled sharply, tears in her eyes as she forced the next words out. “Just go.”  
Beetlejuice stood frozen before her for what seemed like an eternity.

“This girl, do you love her?” He asked again.

She tilted her chin up to look him in the eye. “Yes.”  


“As much as me?”  


Lydia heard the answer loud and clear as a church bell in her head. _No. Impossible._ But out loud she said nothing. Just glared at him. Beetlejuice nodded solemnly and then he was gone. Lydia was alone again. She wrapped her cardigan around herself and crumpled to the floor. She sobbed until the sun rose.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I didn’t dream those things, did I?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new chapter monday :)

In the year 1750 Louie Canis looked down at a sleeping Lawrence Orion. He fought back the powerful urge he had to crawl back into bed beside him and hold him through the night. But Louie was resigned in his decision. He couldn’t be the person Lawrence needed him to be, that much was clear.

He picked up his bag and left.

Later that night Madame Numquam was serving drinks to some rowdy gentleman when a young woman approached her. 

“Excuse me?”

Madame turned around and eyed the girl up and down. There was something off about her, but Madame couldn’t quite put her finger on it. “Yes?”

“Is Lawrence Orion here?”  


Madame’s eyes flitted around and then she grabbed the girl by the arms and dragged her off into a corner. “What’d you think you’re doing?” She hissed. “Coming in here, using his real name. You should know that’s not how it works here.”  


“I’m sorry,” the girl said, yanking her arm free, glaring at Madame. It was clear she wasn’t sorry. “I’m an old friend. He wrote to me, asked me to visit. To help him with his…sadness.”

Madame studied her again. “What kind of friend are you to him?”

“I was his fiancee.”

Madame scoffed.

“Lawrence goes both ways, you know.”

Madame scoffed again. “Don’t come into my house acting so clever, little girl.”

The girl crossed her arms. “I know he’s here, so you might as well tell me. And don’t act like you’re worried about his safety, I know the kind of people you let see him.”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

The girl jutted her chin out at Madame to show that she was unafraid. Madame loathed the girl’s confidence.

“Tell me where he is.”  


Madame gritted her teeth together. “Third floor, second room on the right.”

* * *

Skye wove through the crowd in the gallery looking for her girlfriend. She said polite ‘hellos’ and gave nods and smiles to familiar faces until she finally decided to venture outside where she found Lydia leaning against the old brick wall of the gallery, smoking a cigarette. Skye sighed, she hated the habit, but she couldn’t deny how beautifully cliche it was to see her gothic girlfriend in the darkness, illuminated only by the moon, with smoke exuding from her cranberry-painted lips. She walked over to her and leaned up against the wall beside her. Lydia looked over and smiled a guilty grin.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Skye said, bumping into her shoulder playfully. “Too many people?”

Lydia nodded and took another drag from her cigarette, exhaling the smoke in beautiful swirls. “It’s just a lot.”  


“You’re happy though, right?”  


Lydia did her best not to grimace at Skye’s word choice. “I’m glad people like my work.”  


“They don’t just like it, Lydia, they love it. You’re a phenomenal photographer.”  


Lydia gave her girlfriend a weak smile. “Thank you.”  


“I mean it.”  


Lydia nodded again and looked back out at the quiet street.

“Lydia,” Skye said slowly. “There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you, and your pictures in this exhibit have made me start to wonder all over again.” 

Skye thought back to the first time Lydia had showed her the collection that would be featured in the gallery exhibit: all black and white, all of tombstones and graves. One was of a book she figured Lydia must’ve made, in front of a tombstone for someone named Lawrence. Another was a picture of a painting of a tall man in a suit. His entire body just blurs and smudges, except for his eyes which were an intense, stormy green; the only part of the photo in color, almost as if Lydia had painted the color onto the photograph itself. Another photo was of Lydia in the middle of the woods, wearing a wedding dress as pouring rain smattered down on her. Skye had no idea when or where Lydia had gone to take it, and she knew better than to ask. 

At first Lydia’s collection of secrets that she refused to share made Skye uncomfortable and even sometimes angry, but after a few months she came to except it was just how Lydia was. A creature from another time, a soul from another place. Skye used to ask Lydia what it was like being in a coma, but Lydia made it abundantly clear that topic was strictly off-limits. Lydia never wanted to discuss the night they met either, but of course that was the story from her girlfriend’s past that Skye had the most questions about.

“What is it?” Lydia asked. 

Skye looked into her Lydia’s eyes and did her best to smile without fear of Lydia’s intensity. “When we met, that night—” Lydia visibly grimaced at Skye’s words, but Skye pushed past the uncomfortable energy that had immediately formed between them and kept talking, “—I used to think there was no way those things could’ve happened. That I must’ve dreamed them, or been so drunk that I’d made up some story to explain blacking out.” She waited for Lydia to say something—she didn’t. “But… I didn’t dream those things, did I?”  
Lydia kept her lips pressed together for a long time before she finally nodded and said in a soft voice, so quiet it almost got lost in the night, “You didn’t dream them.”  
“So they really happened then? The mirror, the Underworld?”  


“Netherworld,” Lydia said automatically.

“And the…demon?”  


Lydia nodded again. “He was real. It was all real.”

“Is that where you went?” Skye’s voice had become breathy and soft too. “When you were in the coma? Were you with him?”  


Lydia felt an ache in her chest from her scarred stab wound. From her broken heart. “Yes,” she whispered, tears welling in her eyes that she was desperately fighting to keep back. “I was with him. I thought I was dead.”  


“Lydia,” Skye said, reaching out and grabbing the hand that wasn’t holding a cigarette and squeezing it comfortingly, “do you love him?”  


“I did love him, yes.”  


Skye shook her head. “That’s not what I asked.”  


Lydia looked away from Skye and inhaled from her cigarette again, waiting until she’d exhaled the smoke into the night to continue. “I don’t know how to answer that, Skye. He’s gone, and you’re here and…” she looked back at her girlfriend. “I love _you_.”

Skye inhaled sharply, her eyes growing wide. “You…you do?”

Lydia smiled then, and nodded yet again. “I do.”  


Skye’s worries and anxieties were washed away as she reached out for Lydia and Lydia dropped her half-smoked cigarette and took Skye in her arms. The two kissed and as their lips finally broke apart Skye murmured against Lydia’s mouth: “I love you, too.”


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you going to marry her someday?” He asked.
> 
> Lydia looked at her bare feet making small footprints in the white down on her fire escape. She shook her head without looking back up at him. “I’m not going to marry anyone.”
> 
> He didn’t argue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exciting news! I've completed the fic! There are thirty chapters total which means come the end of next week the conclusion to this duology will be at hand. Thanks so much for sticking with me on this ride :)
> 
> New chapter Wednesday.

Later that winter Lydia woke up from yet another night terror. Once again she crawled onto her fire escape to smoke, and this time she wasn’t surprised to see the demon’s shape in her doorway. 

Lydia sighed. “Hello, Beetlejuice.”  


He emerged from the shadows. “How come you never said my name three times again?”

Lydia quirked an eyebrow at him. “Why would I do that?”

“To punish me.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “I’m not a teenager anymore. I’m not gonna punish my ex-boyfriend for leaving me after I resurrected from the dead by condemning him to be invisible. But I gotta ask, what do you _do_ when you’re visible in the living world?”

He shrugged. “Wander around mostly.”  


“How thrilling.”  


“Lydia, please, I came so we could work things out.”  


This time Lydia shrugged. “There’s nothing to work out. I told you the last time that you came here, I have a life now.” She retreated back to her bed, but right when she was about to pull back the covers Beetlejuice appeared before her, sitting on top of them. 

“I’m sorry I left,” he said, reaching out for her hands. She pulled them back. 

“The whole point of us was so that the other one wouldn’t be alone. Wouldn’t _feel_ alone. That’s why we always ended up back together, no matter what.”

“But you’re not alone this time.”

Lydia nodded.

“I saw you with her,” he said.

That surprised her. She took a small back. She didn’t like the idea of Beetlejuice being around Skye. She didn’t trust him not to intervene in someway. She wasn’t trying to reenact the Taylor Swift song ‘Exile’ with her girlfriend and ex-demon boyfriend anytime soon.

“When?”  


“A few weeks ago. You were at an art gallery. Your photos, they were stunning.”

Lydia held her breath and tried to fight off an oncoming anxiety attack. “You were there,” she practically croaked out around her held breath. “How?”  


“I can make myself blend in when I want to. I recognized her, you know. She summoned me once. What a small world, huh?”

He met Lydia’s gaze and she clenched her teeth. She knew _he_ knew that somehow Lydia had something to do with Skye summoning him all those years ago, he just didn’t know how. Lydia finally released her breath under his intense gaze; resigning herself to tell him the truth.

“I told her to summon you to get her home from The Netherworld.”  


“I see. And how exactly did she get to The Netherworld.”

Lydia groaned and dropped her head into her hands.

“Lydia,” he said in a reprimanding tone.

Lydia lifted her head to look at him again. “She was delivering girl scout cookies to my dorm room and I invited her in to drink with me and my friends and then I got drunk and took her through the mirror to try and…I don’t know—impress her? And then I took her through a wormhole into The Netherworld, and then I realized how stupid it was and told her to summon you.”  


“And to say my name three times again after she did?”

Lydia nodded, feeling guilty. 

“Why would you do that?”

“Because,” Lydia whispered. “I didn’t want her to end up like me.”  


“Did you think I’d fall in love with her?”

“I don’t know,” Lydia relented, taking a few steps away and retreating back to her pack of cigarettes. 

Beetlejuice just watched as she snatched one from the pack and climbed back out on the fire escape; of course he was already there, waiting for her. She ignored him and lit her cigarette. He kept staring at her, taking in how stunning she looked, cloaked in moonlight and the fresh falling snow; smoke curling around her face. 

“I was afraid she’d fall in love with you and get hurt.”

“Then why not stay with her when she summoned me?”

“Because I was afraid you’d be angry with me.”  


Beetlejuice didn’t say anything to argue that point. He regretted many of the things he’d said and done to Lydia and the night he’d stolen the sound from her throat was the one he hated himself for most of all. 

The two sat in silence for awhile until Lydia finished her cigarette. The demon waited for her to crawl back through her window, but she didn’t. She remained frozen in the winter air, letting the snow coat her skin. 

“Are you going to marry her someday?” He asked.

Lydia looked at her bare feet making small footprints in the white down on her fire escape. She shook her head without looking back up at him. “I’m not going to marry anyone.”  


He didn’t argue.

“I really am sorry,” he said gently.

Lydia looked back at him. “I believe you.” He nodded and the silence returned. Lydia was the one to finally break it. “Were you alone? In the end?”  
Beetlejuice studied her eyes, hoping they’d give a sign to say that her question meant something different. She was asking about his suicide. “Almost,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

Beetlejuice shook his head. “It’s going to sound silly.”

“Nothing about death is silly to me.”

He met her gaze yet again, neither one of them looked away. Their eyes were matching storms colliding into each other, creating a hurricane strong enough to decimate cities and destroy bloodlines. 

“At the time,” he said, “I thought it was an angel.”  


“Do you not think that now?”

“I don’t know what I think. But I’ve had so many questions over the years, and until you came along I had trained myself to ignore them.”

“I’m sorry,” Lydia said, truly meaning it.

He shook his head again. “Don’t be. You taught me how powerful it can make someone, to embrace everything their…heart wants them to feel.” Lydia smiled a bit at that, and his old, dead heart felt a flutter like a lovesick schoolboy, but he pushed on, doing his best to appear calm. “I’ve always wondered about my grave.”

“I have too.”

He nodded. “I assumed that maybe…Louie arranged for it. Or, I don’t know…”

“A guardian angel?”  


Beetlejuice felt horribly exposed—embarrassed. But Lydia was gazing at him in her familiar loving way that he had missed so much. There was no judgement in her eyes. 

“Yes,” he said finally. 

“Maybe they did,” she said confidently. “Regardless of who made sure it was there, I’m glad they did.”

“You are?”

She nodded and smiled again. “It tied me to you.”  


“Lydia…”  


“Beetlejuice,” she said, her voice as delicate as a dance, “I’ll never regret you.”

He moved across the landing and took her in his arms. It wasn’t fiery and romantic, it was the embrace of two lost souls finally finding solace in another person. It was two friends finally finding a twin flame. It was two weary travelers finally coming home. Lydia wrapped her arms around her demon and held him tight. But as quickly as the embrace began, it was over, and Lydia was holding nothing but snow. 


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Skye can be all those things for me, Beetlejuice. She can give me a life.”
> 
> “I could give you a life. If you’d let me try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter Friday! As always, thank you SO MUCH for all your support <3

It continued like that for the rest of the winter, the ghoul would show up randomly in her apartment in the middle of the night. They’d sit under the snow while she smoked away her nightmares, and then he’d leave without a word. Since their embrace that one night they hadn’t touched again, Beetlejuice hadn’t even tried, and Lydia wasn’t sure if she wanted him to.

The spring passed by slowly and Beetlejuice stopped coming. Lydia felt the all too familiar pang of loneliness she always felt when he left, but she tried to tell herself it was meant to be. She couldn’t love a ghost and expect life to just fall into place around her. So when she woke up in the middle of the night, her legs tangled in her sheets, screaming from nightmares, and her demon was nowhere to be found, she tried to remind herself about Skye. But Skye was never allowed to spend the night, for Lydia feared what she’d think of the vicious night terrors; plus Lydia was always worried that Beetlejuice would show up while Skye was there. Lydia had stayed over Skye’s several times, but always slipped out once her girlfriend was asleep, letting her think she’d had to leave early for work.

Skye knew Lydia’s ways well, and while she found them infuriating she knew there was no use in trying to change them. Lydia was a diamond in her habits—unbreakable. And Lydia _knew_ Skye hated her stoicism and sadness, which only made her yearn for Beetlejuice all the more; knowing that he had always accepted her grey skies, gladly.

So it was an overwhelming relief when the night of her birthday, he came back. 

Lydia had been hosting a small party in her apartment with her coworkers from the gallery and some of Skye’s friends from the school where she taught. Even though it was August, the party was Halloween-themed. Plastic pumpkins and skeletons cluttered the tiny living room and kitchen and Lydia had demanded that everyone come in costumes. She was wearing a long, tight black dress, her long raven waves ironed straight, and deemed herself Morticia Addams. 

Skye was dressed as a classic witch and Lydia had smirked when she’d opened the door to her earlier in the night to see her clad in a black pointy hat. 

“Ha ha,” Lydia said, pulling her girlfriend in for a kiss.

The party went on till well past midnight and by three a.m. Lydia was finally able to drag Skye out of the building and walk her to the subway. “Text me when you get home,” she said, kissing her again. 

Skye was tipsy and rosy-cheeked. She smiled against Lydia’s mouth as they kissed in the sticky-August heat. “I love you,” she murmured. 

“I love you, too.”

Lydia watched Skye descend the subway steps, then retreated back to her apartment. She had only had two drinks herself, but had eaten almost nothing the entire day, so she walked on sore and wobbly feet in her high heels. She made it to her bedroom and before she even flicked on the light, she knew he was there. His familiar smoky scent filled the room, and the air was chilly even though it was a hundred degrees outside and her air conditioner barely worked. She realized she was smiling. She stepped into the room and over to her desk where she tugged on the small chain of the desk lamp. A soft glow illuminated the room, and sure enough, Beetlejuice was laying on her bed. 

He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed as the small source of light cast across him. “Hey, babe,” he said. She hadn't realized how deeply she’d missed the sound of his voice. Rough like waves crashing against sea rock. 

She walked over to him slowly and stopped a few feet in front of him. “Where have you been?”

“Did you miss me?” He wasn’t taunting, he was asking in earnest. Lydia said nothing, just nodded. Beetlejuice clenched his jaw, not sure what to make of this moment between them. 

He’d seen her at the party with Skye. He’d seen how the two women had looked at each other. He’d remembered when Lydia used to look at him like that. But now, as she stood before him— thirty-years-old (the same age he would remain for all eternity), so far gone from the sad girl he’d met on the roof, in the middle of a rainstorm—she was looking at him in a wholly different way. Not with blind infatuation, or young and exuberant love; but with longing. There was no erasing what they were to each other, what they had been. He had never wanted anyone or anything as badly as he would always want Lydia. And throughout the course of the night he had doubted that Lydia still felt the same, but the disparity between the light looks of love she’d shown Skye, and the achingly passionate one she was giving him now, he knew that he would always hold her heart. Deserved or not, she was still his.

“I brought you something,” he said gruffly, reaching into his jacket. He produced a small black box and handed it to her. “Happy Birthday.”  


Lydia smiled weakly and took the box from him. She opened it to find a small black gemstone in the shape of a heart hanging from a thin chain. She delicately lifted the necklace from the box and held it up in the dim lamplight.

“Onyx,” he said, nodding towards the stone. “Supposed to help ward off negative energy.” Lydia smirked at him. He chuckled. “It’s also supposed to help with stress.”

“What a witchy gift,” Lydia said, still smiling. “Do you believe all that?”  


“If you’d asked me that a few decades ago I’d say of course not. But I also didn’t know any teenagers that could climb through mirrors and conjure portals back then either.” Lydia smiled even bigger and he felt butterflies rage inside his stomach at the sight of it. “But now?” He said, smiling back at her. “Absolutely.”  


Lydia stepped closer and held the necklace out to him. “Put it on for me?”  


His smile vanished as he nodded numbly. He took the necklace from her, his icy fingers brushing gently across her warm ones. She turned around and gently lifted her long, black hair up from the nape of her neck. Beetlejuice slowly, as gently as he could, reached in front of her to drape the stone across her neck. He clasped the chain behind her and then the two just remained that way for a moment. He was standing so close she could feel the breathe he didn’t need to breathe on her neck. She shivered from the excitement it stirred in her.

She knew this was wrong. She had a girlfriend who she loved. A girlfriend who trusted her. And here she was alone at night with her ex… _lover,_ she thought. It was the only word that felt somewhat heavy enough. ‘Boyfriend’ seemed too young and light and frankly, silly. ‘Ex-fiancee’ sounded absurd, ‘friend’ would never be enough, and Lydia knew she no longer believed in ‘soul-mates.’ But then she thought back to the summer they’d met. Her eighteenth birthday and what they’d said to each other: _you’re my favorite person._ She realized that, all these years later, those words still rang true. 

She slowly turned back around to face him. She tilted her head to look up into his eyes and saw the sorrow buried in them. He still wanted her, she could tell. She wondered if he could tell how badly she still wanted him. 

“Why were you gone for so long?”

“I was trying to do the right thing for once.”  


His answer surprised her. He’d never tried to do the ‘right’ thing in regards to their relationship before. At this point in her mess of a life, she wasn’t even sure what the right thing was anymore. 

“You love that girl,” he said simply. “You seem…content. I knew I was messing that up.”

“You weren’t,” Lydia said gently.

“Fine, then maybe I stayed away because I’m as selfish as ever.” Ah, that sounded like the Beetlejuice she knew. “I still want you, you know that. And to come sit here with you all night, knowing you’ll leave when the sun rises and go to _her—_ I just….couldn’t handle it.”

“So what?” Lydia asked. “You want me to leave Skye?”  


Beetlejuice sat back down on the bed, staring at his boots, not answering her question. 

“What would leaving her mean for us?” Lydia asked. “You’ll come live here with me? What will you do while I’m at work? Will I be able to introduce you to my friends? Will I be able to bring you home for Thanksgiving dinner?” Beetlejuice looked up at her sadly. “Skye can be all those things for me, Beetlejuice. She can give me a life.”

“I could give you a life. If you’d let me try.”

Lydia wanted to argue with him, tell him again how she’d tried so many times in the past, but was this time perhaps _truly_ different? She was stable in her career and her friendships. She had a decent relationship with her dad and Delia. She knew she could contact her mom if she needed her, or call on the Maitlands if she was truly lonely. She had a therapist. She had a smoking habit. She had nightmares. She had a hole in her heart he’d made two years ago when she woke up in a hospital bed alone For most of her twenties she had feared that he’d never be able to forgive her for running away, but now she found it was her who was struggling to forgive him. 

When she didn’t respond to his plea he reached out and grabbed at the side of her dress and tugged, gently, but firmly. She let herself stumble a step towards him, and then another as he kept tugging until his knees were spread and she was standing nestled between them. He slowly trailed his hand down the curve of her hip and the side of her thigh. She stayed still as he did, holding her breath as he glided his hand along her body, over the thin layer of fabric of her dress—the only thing keeping her bare skin from his. 

She had missed his touch, this was undeniable. She _did_ love Skye, but she’d be lying to herself if she said it compared to what she had with Beetlejuice—what she had _always_ had with him. She had never been one to believe in soul mates and destiny, but every time he came back to her, or she to him, it was hard to discredit fate. It would always be near impossible for her to deny that this was her person.

“I adore you,” he said softly, looking up at her.

She gazed down at him, studying him intently. He was as gorgeous as ever. He had an uncanny beauty to him that she’d always found intoxicating, and how many people she wondered felt the same infatuation for their first love that she still felt for him. She had loved him at the end of her girlhood on the cusp of adulthood. And she loved him now in the midst of her adult life. She would always love him. She realized then and there, with his hands on her yet again, that this _was_ her fate, and she resigned herself to it.

“Do you want me?” She whispered.

He nodded. “Always.”  


She took a small step back from him. “Then come and get me.”


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The minds of the loved ones of Lydia Deetz were cluttered with unanswerable questions. Questions they knew they could never ask, because how could Lydia herself even know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short chapter today, but longer ones coming next week!

Skye knew much more than her girlfriend gave her credit for. She knew whenever Lydia had gone out to smoke, even if she claimed it was a thousand other things. She knew when Lydia was lying about having to work late because she was honestly just too sad to endure anyone else’s presence. She knew that Lydia snuck out of her bed as soon as she had fallen asleep. And she knew that Lydia was still in love with the demon called Beetlejuice.

She didn’t know that he still visited her, but she’d suspected it on occasion. She knew Lydia had night terrors and that was why she didn’t want to ever spend the night. She had no idea what the night terrors were about though. She wrongly assumed they were about the time she spent in The Netherworld during her coma. She, like everyone else, had no comprehension of how much Lydia had truly enjoyed that year. Sure, there’d been fights and sadness as there was with anything, but there’d also been Beetlejuice. There’d been brutal honesty and beautiful nights tangled up in his arms. And while Skye wasn’t as painfully happy as the Maitlands, she was still nowhere near as sad as Lydia. The only person who was, as we all know by now, was Beetlejuice. 

Skye wasn’t a witch like Lydia or an empath like Emily. She had no mirror magic, or premonitions. She just had the slightly enhanced intuition that many women have. Which is why the night of Lydia’s thirtieth birthday, once she’d descended the subway stairs and boarded her train, she knew that Lydia was going to leave her. She wasn’t sure how soon, or for what reason exactly, she had simply seen the goodbye written across Lydia’s face. Her girlfriend had never had much of a poker face. If she was feeling something strongly enough then sure enough you’d be able to see it in the glint of her eyes and the curve of her jaw.

Skye was in love with Lydia—far more than Lydia was with her. She knew this too. She wanted to marry Lydia, but Lydia had made it clear from the beginning how vehemently opposed to marriage she was. This was one of the things about Lydia that remained unanswered to Skye. And as Skye rode the train home that night she suspected that her aversion to marriage, like many other things, would always be a mystery to her.

Skye often wondered how her life would’ve been different had she declined Lydia’s invitation into her dorm all those years ago, or if she’d simply just never knocked on her door at all. These ‘what ifs’ clouded her mind much in the same way Delia wondered what would have happened if Lydia chose to never awake from her coma, or the way the Maitlands wondered what if Lydia had jumped off their roof on that rainy night that felt like a lifetime ago.

The minds of the loved ones of Lydia Deetz were cluttered with unanswerable questions. Questions they knew they could never ask, because how could Lydia herself even know. 

The heaviest questions however came from Beetlejuice. Before Lydia he wondered what would’ve happened if Lawrence Orion had never stepped off that stool in his tiny room in that filthy mollyhouse. But then there was Lydia and then Lydia was gone for years and years and he wondered what would’ve happened if he hadn’t caught her when she slipped on that rain-slick roof. What would’ve happened if he’d finished the job of her requested murder. Or what would’ve happened if he hadn’t left her hospital bed. These questions kept him awake at night, trapped in a cage of his own design; the bars a muted grey that he suspected was the color of loneliness itself. It was, after all, the color of the sky the first night Lydia Deetz tried to end her life.

* * *

Beetlejuice studied Lydia for only a moment before getting up from the bed and striding over to her. He knotted a hand in her hair at the base of her neck and yanked her head back as he walked her across the room and pressed her against the wall. She hissed as he pulled her hair tighter. She tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “Come on,” she said softly. Then with a coy smile, “don’t be a coward.”

Beetlejuice’s eyes glinted at her taunting tone, a smirk spreading across his face and then his mouth was against hers. His tongue worked its way between her teeth and explored her mouth. She tasted _so good._ A mix of the fruity cocktails she’d had and the Newport cigarettes she’d smoked. Lydia drank in his flavor as well, also smoky but with a more earthy bouquet, like fresh herbs.

The two worked at devouring each other and then Lydia felt a sudden pull on her wrists. She realized they were bound behind her back but without any rope. It was the same magic he’d used years ago in the graveyard to keep her frozen. She couldn’t help but smile against his mouth as their familiar power play resurfaced so easily.

“Ya gonna behave, dollface?” He whispered in her ear.

“Not a chance.”


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They burned for so long, longer than they had any right to; they burned across time and space, above and below the grave. They loved in the realms of the dead, on top of tombstones and bones. They loved from across mirrors and portals. They loved fiercely. And all that huffing and puffing finally snuffed out the flame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! There are only TWO more chapters after this which means this saga comes to an end on Friday.
> 
> Thank you so much for sticking with me on this journey. The love between Beetlejuice and Lydia means so much to me, and it means even more that you all enjoyed my portrayal of it.
> 
> Stay wonderful, and enjoy the story as we near the end.

Lydia woke before Beetlejuice and slipped into the shower to get ready for work. She was sore, but in the best way. 

As she washed her hair she tried to rehearse her breakup with Skye in her head. She knew cheating on her was cruel, Skye didn’t deserve that. _Maybe I’m as bad as him,_ she thought. She shook her head, she had too much to do today, she couldn’t afford a mental breakdown right now. _I’ll have to pencil that in for later,_ she chuckled a bit to herself at the joke.

* * *

Beetlejuice awoke to find the other side of the bed empty and the sound of the shower running. _How familiar._ For a moment he pretended it was twelve years ago and he was in the haunted house with Lydia. It was new and wonderful and they were madly in love. He was _still_ madly in love with her, but it wasn’t the same. It felt like standing in the middle of a burned-down room, trying to make it beautiful again. It couldn’t be done. He had tried to tear it down and rebuild, it was the only way to put the beauty back into it; but Lydia had made it clear that she wasn’t up for that anymore. He didn’t blame her.

He knew he could keep coming back here. Keep having stolen moments with her. He could have a sporadic collection of nights tangled up in her legs and sheets. A few moments with her mouth on his snatched up here and there. But he knew those nights would always end with her washing the feel and taste of him away in her steaming shower, and then she’d run off to the girl she was in love with. The living girl who had never hurt her. And he _wanted_ that for Lydia. 

The old, hateful, sinful demon, had finally, _truly_ learned to love in every sense of the word. He loved that girl more than he’d ever loved anything in his entire existence. And whereas every moment up until that one he wad wanted what was best for _him,_ he finally wanted what was best for her.

So he got up and went over to her desk. 

He picked up a pen and for the first time in centuries, he began to write.

* * *

“Beetlejuice, can you do me a favor and make some coffee? I’m running late!” Lydia called out as she was toweling off her hair walking into her room, only to find it empty. She paused for a moment in the doorway, dropping her towel to the floor. “Beetlejuice?” She asked softly.

She knew in that moment he was gone, and that he wasn’t coming back. Not anymore. Not again. 

She felt a stabbing pain in her chest, like his dagger was plunging into her heart all over again. _No,_ she thought frantically. _I’m going to leave her. I choose you, you idiot. I always choose you._

“Beetlejuice,” she said again. But she knew even if she said it a third time he wouldn’t come, it would just make him invisible again and bottle up his powers. While he was free he would only come to her if he chose to, and it was crystal clear to her now that he would never choose to do so again. 

It was then that she noticed the piece of paper laid out on her desk. Numbly, she shuffled over and pulled out the chair to sit down. It was a poem, penned in messy handwriting. She’d never actually seen anything in Beetlejuice’s hand, but she knew it was his.

_This is how the night ends. In winter.  
_ _In screams.  
_ _This is how_ _you_

_kill her. You press her_ _until you  
_ _f_ _eel the veins,  
_ _you see the blue in her,_

_you milk out the grey—  
_ _scoop her marrow—  
_ _suck away all the yolk that_

_made her. You  
_ _love her.  
_ _It’s all you can do._

_Then the water comes.  
_ _You’re ash from the fire  
_ _you two made. She shouldn’t_

_burn anymore.  
_ _You’re good friends  
_ _with the wind._

_You ride away on it.  
_ _You kiss the ghost.  
_ _She loves you._

_She swallows all the promises  
_ _you don’t  
_ _deserve. Perhaps you_

_finally remembered.  
_ _Perhaps she finally escapes.  
_ _Perhaps.  
_ _Perhaps._

Lydia read the poem three times, then set the paper back down on her desk. _He’s never coming back,_ she thought to herself. The finality of it all was brutal. She tried for a moment or two to argue with herself that it wasn't true, but she finally gave up. It is. They burned for so long, longer than they had any right to; they burned across time and space, above and below the grave. They loved in the realms of the dead, on top of tombstones and bones. They loved from across mirrors and portals. They loved fiercely. And all that huffing and puffing finally snuffed out the flame.

She felt her heart begin to break. She knew she would never put it back together again.

_I chose him._ She thought to herself.

She was certain she would die with that thought replaying in her mind.

So she took out another piece of paper and wrote a note.

* * *

Lawrence Orion stepped up onto the small stool so that he was eye-level with the noose. 

Just then the door in front of him opened. A girl stood there, in a long black dress and cloak pulled up over her long black hair. 

He gasped softly.

“Are you…the angel of death?” He whispered.

She lowered her hood so that he could see her fierce blue eyes, like frozen lakes he could drown in; perhaps, gladly by the looks of how beautiful and inviting they were.

“No,” she said calmly. “I’m just here to guide you.”  


He frowned. “I don’t know who sent you, but you can’t change my mind. I don’t care if it’s a sin. Sin doesn’t matter. I know there’s nothing after this.”  


“There is though,” the girl dressed like death said. “I’ve been there.”  


“Are you the grim reaper?” He asked.

She smiled. It was chilling. “No,” she said. “As I told you. I’m a guide.”

She walked towards him and he stilled. She reached out slowly and took his hand in hers. “I know the world is cruel,” she said softly. “I won’t tell you it will get better, because it won’t. It will be hard forever. You could stay and learn to endure it.”

“I can’t,” he whispered, long overdue tears welling in his eyes.

She nodded. “Then don’t.” He opened his mouth to question her, but she squeezed his hand and shook her head ever so slightly. “It’s okay, my love,” she whispered. “You can go. You can rest.”  


Lawrence Orion’s body was found later that night—swinging from a noose. He’d left a short suicide note in his pocket. Only four words long. It read:

_I will be okay._

_* * *_

Skye opened the door to Lydia and knew the second she looked into her eyes what was to come. “Oh,” Skye said softly. “ _Oh.”_

Lydia frowned as tears glistened in her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Skye did her best to give a weak smile. She reached out her arms and pulled Lydia in tight. Lydia wrapped her arms around her and began to cry for the first time in ages. “I’m sorry,” she kept saying over and over again. Skye just stroked her hair and murmured, “I know.”

When the two girls finally broke apart it was Lydia who spoke first. 

“I could never be what you needed,” she said. “You want a wife, one who isn’t afraid to spend the night in your bed. You need someone who isn’t full of secrets.”

Skye nodded. “I do. But I _want_ you.”

Lydia bit her lip and nodded back. “I know.”

“Is it him?” Skye asked, even though it physically pained her to do so.

Lydia shook her head. “No,” she said. Skye gave her a skeptical look. “I mean it. I mean—it was. At first. But now, now it’s…something else. I don’t know what yet.”

Skye considered this and then nodded again. “Well, whatever it is, I hope you find it.”

Lydia gave the former girl scout a weak smile, then turned and left. 

The two never saw each other again.

* * *

Lydia went to work and put in her resignation. Then she went home and bought a one-way ticket to Hawaii.

* * *

Two weeks later and Lydia had packed up her apartment and shipped most of her things ahead so that she was only bringing a backpack and a small suitcase onto the plane. 

She was leaving in the morning so she knew she had to do this tonight. 

She took out the vintage dress she’d thrifted the day after booking her ticket and put it on, struggling a bit with the corset-like laces. 

Once she was dressed she walked into her bathroom and faced the mirror. She took a deep breath and then she spoke an incantation. Then Lydia Deetz climbed through the mirror, but she didn’t emerge in the void between worlds.

She emerged in a small town in Connecticut on June 13th, 1750.


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I will see you again. On the other side. It will be a long time from now, my love. I’m past the point of jumping off rooftops and wielding knives. But we all end up there eventually. You said soulmates are who you choose to go to in the afterlife. I want you to know that I will choose you. Always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more chapter left after this one :)

An old witch named Catherine lived in the haunted house that was no longer haunted. Because she was a witch she wasn’t at all surprised when she received a letter with no return address and a note on the back that read: _Please place on the grave of Lawrence Orion and knock three times._

_* * *_

It took Beetlejuice a moment to realize that the knocking was coming from above his coffin and not outside the door.

He materialized in the graveyard above to see the letter sitting on top of his tombstone. He knew even before he opened it that it was from Lydia.

_I will see you again. On the other side. It will be a long time from now, my love. I’m past the point of jumping off rooftops and wielding knives. But we all end up there eventually. You said soulmates are who you choose to go to in the afterlife. I want you to know that I will choose you._

_Always._

_* * *_

Lydia Deetz found Lawrence Orion on a stool in his room in the tavern that wasn’t really a tavern in the town with the house that was not yet haunted. There was a noose before him. There was all the sadness of the world in his eyes. When he saw her, he gasped. She had never seen him take a necessary breath until that moment. 

“Are you the angel of death?” He whispered.

She smiled. “No. I’m simply a guide.”

Lawrence Orion shook his head, tears in his eyes. _How strange,_ Lydia thought. She would’ve never been able to picture such a sight on her own. “I can’t stay,” he whispered, his voice ragged. She frowned, knowing all too well how much more ragged it would become in just a few moments. But she hadn’t come to stop him. She couldn’t bear to erase those times. She needed them desperately; it was her turn to be greedy. 

She was there to fulfill the paradox her demon told her about on a fire escape in the middle of winter. She was there to make sense of the tombstone that should’t be. She was there to give Lawrence Orion a last bit of relief before he left this world forever.

“I’m not here to try and convince you to stay,” she said calmly. Her words startled him. She slowly began to approach him, each step tentative, she couldn’t bear for him to step off that stool without her saying what she knew needed to be said. “It is a cruel world. I won’t tell you it will get easier because it won’t. It will only become familiar. You could stay and endure it, but there is no shame in what you want to do.” 

Lawrence Orion bit back more tears. “You really do look like an angel,” he whispered.

“I’m not,” Lydia repeated. “I told you. I’m a guide.”  


“To where?”

“The other side.” She closed out the space between them and took his hand in hers. On that night, centuries ago, a man with many names, touched Lydia Deetz for the first time. And on that night, a girl with many demons inside her, touched Beetlejuice for the thousandth time. She smiled kindly at him. “It’s okay, my love,” she whispered. “You can go.”

Lawrence Orion was found the next morning, hanging from a noose. A suicide note left on the desk that read:

_I no longer wished to be here. But fear not. I believe with all my heart that everything will be okay._

_* * *_

When Louie heard of Lawrence’s death, he grieved and he ached. But he never spoke of him out loud again.

* * *

The day Lawrence Orion was found dead, Lydia waited for the coroner to arrive and take his body away then she went to the church and sought out the priest.

“What can I do for you, my dear?” The priest asked, quite uncomfortably, taking in Lydia’s dauntingly macabre appearance. 

“I need a grave for a man named Lawrence Orion. He worked just down the road. He has passed.”

The priest glared at her. “We don’t give marked graves to the likes of him.”  


Lydia sighed. Muttering a witches’ curse on the man as she left, and made her way to the graveyard that felt like home. It was of course much emptier than when she had come to know it, but she could feel the souls in the air nonetheless. She found the graveyard keeper.

“Hello, Miss. What can I do ya for?”  


“A man is to be buried in an unmarked grave here today. I wish for him to have a proper burial.”

“I see. I take it there is a good reason his grave is meant to be unmarked?”

Lydia shook her head. “There is never a good reason to forget the dead.”  
The Keeper nodded. He respected the dead. This girl before him looked like death incarnate. He sensed somehow, that she was from another world. He would have a descendant many, many years from that day, named Catherine, who would place letters on the grave he was about to concede to giving.

“And how do you plan to pay for it?” He asked Lydia.

Lydia produced a copy of _The Handbook for The Recently Deceased._

“With wisdom.”  


* * *

Late in the night, after the hateful folk of the town had buried Lawrence Orion in an unmarked grave, Lydia and the Keeper made fast work to dig him up and deposit him in his proper grave in the center of the cemetery. 

“Thank you,” Lydia said to the Keeper when they finished. “You don’t know what this means to me.”  


The Keeper nodded to the strange girl. “Did you love him?”

She shook her head. “No. I loved who he will become.”  


The Keeper never saw Lydia Deetz again.

* * *

Lydia Deetz spent the rest of her days of her long life in Hawaii. She became a world renown photographer, specializing in photos of graveyards. She never married, but had a slew of lovers. 

In her late forties she returned to New York to visit Emily Deetz’s grave. The tombstones for Delia and Charles Deetz were now there as well.

She used mirrors to visit her mother and the Maitlands on occasion. But as she got older she did so less and less. Occasionally she would Google the girl scout. Lydia learned that she had become a best-selling author for a novel that was a re-telling of _Frankenstein._

Lydia re-read _Frankenstein_ many more times throughout her life. She got a tattoo across her heart that read, _Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful._ She looked at it in the mirror often, and even though it appeared to her backwards, it always set her mind back on track.

She wrote letters to the witch who lived in her old house and asked her to leave pages of poetry on the grave of Lawrence Orion.

In her fifties she published a book of photos. She dedicated it to him.

In her sixties she took a bad tumble down a flight of stairs and had to walk with a cane for the rest of her life. She got one that was black and white stripes.

She drank a lot of coffee. She read a lot of books. She learned to surf. She learned to dance. She learned to love again. She fell in love with a man named Alex and a woman named Sophia, and Sophia and Alex fell in love with her back and also with each other, and the three of them bought a house together on the beach. Lydia did not spend the night in their bed. The nightmares had never left her alone. They weren’t as frequent, but they were still there.

Sometimes he came to her in her dreams.

In her seventies Sophia got sick and did not get better. Her and Alex held onto each other for as long as they could. After Sophia left this world, Alex threw away all of Lydia’s packets of cigarettes. “You must stay with me as long as you can,” he told her. Lydia was an expert in the heartache of leaving. So she didn’t fight her last living lover on the matter. She nodded once, and never smoked a cigarette again. But she had put smoke into her for so long, to drown out every bit of darkness that found its way inside her, that decades later was far too late to try and expel all the damage she had done. 

In her eighties a drunk driver decided to fall asleep at the wheel at the same time that Alex happened to be driving by. She buried him next to Sophia. 

In her nineties she knew she didn’t have much time left. She felt the smoke and sadness in her lungs like stones in pockets, and the world had become her river. 

She had never had any children, she didn’t have any living relatives left, and her lovers had gone to The Netherworld long ago. So she drafted a will, leaving everything she had; her fortune (which was rather great), her books, her photos—everything—to one person.

* * *

On a rainy summer night, at the age of a hundred and one, Lydia Deetz died. 


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Everyone knows you. You’re a legend around here. The girl who married a demon and then came back from the dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of the Lost My Mind Duology
> 
> Thank you all for coming with me on this wild ride to tell me own take on Beetlejuice and Lydia's love story. I hope this final chapter is everything you all were hoping for.
> 
> And even though times are tough right now remember: "Don't end yourself, defend yourself."
> 
> Now, on with the show.

Lydia Deetz opened her eyes. She was standing outside the door to the waiting room. This time she was meant to be there.

She entered and got in line. When she finally reached the desk, it wasn’t Jeanie sitting there, but a new girl. Lydia noted the red ribbon like marks on her wrist. She frowned. She understood though.

“Hi there,” Lydia said.

The girl looked up at Lydia and laughed softly. “Lydia Deetz?”

Lydia nodded. “You know me?”

“Everyone knows you. You’re a legend around here. The girl who married a demon and then came back from the dead.”

“We never actually got married.”  


The girl waved a hand to brush her off. “You don’t need to fill out the paperwork, hon. We got it all from last time. But you’re lucky you let yourself die of old age this time.”  


“Why’s that?” Lydia asked.

The girl laughed again. “Jeez, hun you don’t know?” Lydia shook her head. The girl then bent down and opened the bottom drawer of her desk to retrieve a mirror. She held it up for Lydia to see. Lydia gasped. She didn’t look a day older than seventeen. The girl grinned. “Lucky Lydia Deetz.”

Lydia shook her head, smiling in disbelief. Never in all her life had she thought the word _luck_ would be attributed to her.

“So,” the girl said, “where ya headed? I’m sure it ain’t the newly-dead dorms, considering how many folks ya got down here. Mom, Dad, Step-Mom, lover number one or two? Who’ll it be?”

Lydia shook her head. “None of them,” she said. 

There was only one place she wanted to go.

* * *

The former girl scout, turned english teacher—Skye Butler, died of cancer many years before Lydia Deetz. It was a tragedy. Her funeral was packed, she was beloved by everyone. Lydia Deetz herself had been in attendance. She’d come in quietly in the back and slipped out before anyone could see her. But she made a note of the young, blonde girl in the front pew who looked so much like her grandmother.

* * *

Presley Butler’s cell phone woke her up in the middle of the afternoon, the day after Lydia Deetz died.

“Hello,” she mumbled into the receiver. She had covered the night shift at the cheap movie theatre where she worked full-time inbetween university classes, trying and failing to make even a fraction of the cost of her student loans.

“Is this Miss Butler?” A woman asked on the other end.

“Yes,” Presley said, sitting up in bed and reaching for her glasses on the bedside table.

“Good afternoon, Miss Butler. My name is Leslie Gems. I’m the lawyer in charge of the estate of the late Lydia Deetz.”

“The photographer?” Presley asked, confused as to why this woman was calling her. Then she registered the word _late._ “Wait, is she dead?”

“I’m afraid so,” Leslie Gems said. “I’m calling because you are the sole inheritor of her estate. All of her assets are yours.”  


“Wh…what?” Presley said softly, slowly going into shock.

“You are the sole inheritor of everything Miss Deetz left behind. Her wide collection of rare books, all of her photographs, the copyright for her book, and of course her fortune.”  


“Her…her _fortune?”  
_

“Yes. Miss Deetz did quite well for herself. You’re inheriting all of it. 3 million dollars to be exact.”

Presley almost dropped the phone.

“Miss Butler?” Leslie Gems said. “Are you still there?”

“I…I’m here.”

“Wonderful. If I can just confirm your address I’ll have the paperwork sent over.”  


“Why?”  


“So we can begin the—”

“No,” Presley cut in. “I mean why did this famous photographer leave me everything?”  


“I’m afraid I do not know Miss Butler. Lydia Deetz had many secrets. This was one of them.”  


After Presley got off the phone with Leslie Gems, she called up the movie theatre and quit her job.

Later that day a courier delivered the paperwork. Inside there was a huge stack of paper bound in twine, and underneath a small envelope with the words: _To the granddaughter of Skye Butler, the girl scout,_ written on it. Confused, Presley opened it. Inside there was a piece of paper that read:  


_Dear Presley_

_You’re wondering why I’ve left you all I have. It’s quite simple, I loved your grandmother and I broke her heart. When the day comes that you see her again, tell her Lydia says she’s sorry._

_Lydia Deetz_

* * *

There were three knocks on Beetlejuice’s door. He put down his copy of _The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson_ and went to answer it. 

He opened it to see Lydia Deetz standing before him, looking exactly as she had the day they met, all those years ago. 

He opened his mouth to speak, and found he was so stunned that he didn’t have the words. But Lydia did. So she smiled and said:

“Hey, babe.”


End file.
